12volt cordless drill - cordless drill

At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum''s paleontology lab, the air scribe has become the workhorse of fossil preparation. The discovery of a large sauropod dinosaur in the highly indurated sandstones of the Mid-Cretaceous Turney Ranch Formation southeast of the museum posed numerous technical problems for our lab staff. Most troubling was the removal of cordless vast amounts of sedimentary rock, which was both very tough and firmly cemented by silica to the softer, calcite-replaced bones. Experimenting with a number of hand tools, grinders, hardware-store engravers, and rotary devices, we happened upon drill a Chicago Pneumatic Air Scribe (see supplier''s address on 12volt page 421), and it has since become our primary lab tool on this project. We now have five Chicago air scribes, and progress on our dinosaur has been extraordinary. One large and complex midback vertebra, which had been crushed during fossilization, cordless and drill took seven months to prepare with the scribe, but it was in the middle of a 150-pound block of sandstone. Not only was museum preparator Yolaikia Sciole able to remove this complex and fragile vertebra without damage, but ultimately it was prepared from the inside out, exposing most of the internal bone structures, including arterial and nerve canals and never-before-seen pneumatic structures that lightened the bone in life. Most of the bones in this vertebra are no more than 0.25-inch thick and are replaced by easily cleaved, fragile calcite. The air scribe, and a light touch by the preparator, did the trick.

At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum''s paleontology lab, the air scribe has become the workhorse of fossil preparation. The discovery of a large sauropod dinosaur in the highly indurated sandstones of the Mid-Cretaceous Turney Ranch Formation southeast of the museum posed numerous technical problems for our lab staff. Most troubling was the removal of cordless vast amounts of sedimentary rock, which was both very tough and firmly cemented by silica to the softer, calcite-replaced bones. Experimenting with a number of hand tools, grinders, hardware-store engravers, and rotary devices, we happened upon drill a Chicago Pneumatic Air Scribe (see supplier''s address on 12volt page 421), and it has since become our primary lab tool on this project. We now have five Chicago air scribes, and progress on our dinosaur has been extraordinary. One large and complex midback vertebra, which had been crushed during fossilization, cordless and drill took seven months to prepare with the scribe, but it was in the middle of a 150-pound block of sandstone. Not only was museum preparator Yolaikia Sciole able to remove this complex and fragile vertebra without damage, but ultimately it was prepared from the inside out, exposing most of the internal bone structures, including arterial and nerve canals and never-before-seen pneumatic structures that lightened the bone in life. Most of the bones in this vertebra are no more than 0.25-inch thick and are replaced by easily cleaved, fragile calcite. The air scribe, and a light touch by the preparator, did the trick.

"We''ve run them for four months with zero problems," reports Tolley. "We reduced the number of valves on the new vats by six, and there''s less need for back-flushing of the system." He estimates 10 to 15 lbs. of cheese is back-flushed with conventional valve systems. Given the plant''s 12 vats, that''s a lot of 12volt product waste that can be eliminated and fewer housekeeping issues with which to contend. The valves are being incorporated in the $40 million mozzarella plant that Davisco is building in Lake Norden, S.D. That facility is scheduled to come on line in cordless September.