Introduction:
Desiccating cabinets are generally seen as storage areas that are both dry
and dust-free. And the family of Secador™ Automatic Desiccator Cabinets
certainly represent storage that is both dry and dust-free.
But many competitive desiccating cabinets are not oil-free because they use lubricated bearings in the design of the sliding doors that separate the desiccant regenerating station from the volume of the storage chamber. Such pumps have to be oiled as part of a routine maintenance program.
Secador cabinets are "oil-free":
The fan that is used in the Automatic Secador desiccating cabinets is
a ball bearing fan which is permanently lubricated in the factory, and
unlike the sleeve bearings that are used in some lower cost competitor's
cabinets, these fans never have to be oiled.
Storage in an oil-free environment is important to many would-be users of a desiccating storage cabinet including those with samples for later analysis by surface analysis techniques such as Auger, XPS, and SIMS. Other examples would be the storage of biomaterials and implants, silicon wafers, just to name several. At the present time, we can not offer the fan with a "dry" pump but we believe that whatever oil vapor is present would be very small slight indeed, especially since such vapors would be constantly being vented to the outside.
