Bio-rad SmartSpec Plus Spectrophotometer
I picked up a Bio-rad SmartSpec UV-Vis Spectrophotometer on eBay. The SmartSpec uses a Xenon flash lamp and is a much more compact/similar design than the DU530/DR4000 I previously looked at. Of course I decided to pull it apart, and my pictures are below for reference.
The basic layout is shown below. The PCB looks like a very traditional 1980s/90s design:
The lamp sits above the spectrometer block in the metal enclosure, with the cuvette sitting between lamp and the spectrometer:
Inside the spectrometer block we see a couple of mirrors and the diffraction mirror:
It uses a traditional design, fairly similar to that employed by Ocean optics and other spectrometer makers:
The light essentially reflects off the diffraction mirror and into a linear CCD. I suspect this is an ILX511, which is pretty common in spectrometers and I’ve played with before.
A few more pictures of other parts of the instrument are below. I’ll add more posts if I do any more work with this device.
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