[Nhcoll-l] Compactors in collections

Wed Dec 15 11:22:00 EST 2021

Greatly agree with John that condition monitoring can be harder in compactorized shelving. However, if your containers are mostly smaller than a gallon, this system can help - it can be customized very easily to fit any existing shelf system, and allows dozens of containers to be checked at once. It's cheap - any sheet metal shop can make it - and pays for itself fairly quickly in terms of labor hours saved during routine condition checks.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337950870_An_improved_design_for_the_storage_of_fluid-preserved_specimens_in_small_to_medium-sized_containers

Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates
________________________________
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
prc44 at drexel.edu<mailto:prc44 at drexel.edu> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of John E Simmons
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2021 10:56 AM
To: Dirk Neumann <neumann at snsb.de>
Cc: NHCOLL-new <nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Compactors in collections

External.
Following on Dirk's comments, if you are storing specimens in fluid on compactors, there is no need to have seals between the carriages and in any case, the shelving should be an open design (e.g., wire shelves or 50% penetrated shelves) to allow sprinklers to penetrate through them.

The problem with any dense storage system is monitoring of individual specimens and containers--it is the same problem whether they are on compactors or fixed shelving. We are all being faced with moves to denser and denser storage due to growing collections and stagnant space allotments. Compactors have the huge advantage in dense storage in that you can more easily design narrow carriages so that you can inspect containers from either side of the shelves. We found at KU that moving the compactors to get access to the specimens was not a serious problem in terms of time or effort, and we gained more storage space with a dense storage system that could be more easily monitored.  That said, I still think the most of the shelves at KU are too deep. If you have more than one row of jars on the shelf, it is difficult to see the specimens in the second and third row back (etc., etc.). What we really need is a new design for fluid collection shelving that allows collection managers to monitor the containers without having to move any of the jars. It is the repeated removal and replacement of jars that causes most of the problems of container misplacement and loose seals, not vibrations of moving compactors.

The first concern for any dense shelving system for natural history specimens should be ease of monitoring. Too often in planning the time used by the collection care staff to take care of the collection is not factored in to the equation. This has to change.

John E. Simmons
Writer and Museum Consultant
Museologica
and
Associate Curator of Collections
Earth and Mineral Science Museum & Art Gallery
Penn State University
and
Investigador Asociado, Departamento de Ornitologia
Museo de Historia Natural, Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima

On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 10:46 AM Dirk Neumann <neumann at snsb.de<mailto:neumann at snsb.de>> wrote:
... adding to Paul's comment, fire risks may increase if the compactors are "closed" allow alcohol fumes to build up. Also worth considering is potentially spillage from moving the compactors or compromising of seals, especially if the compactors are automated (which adds potential ignition sources on various levels, i.e. control panels, motors). John just commented on speed and wheel size.

Also, in case of fire or other emergency (and/or power failure), closed isles are hardly accessible ...

So a lot of pros and cons.

Another piece for Rob's altar of constraints is that with compacting you actually do not create more space, but agree to crowd objects to an affordable/manageable maximum. This minimises (already in the first place limited) possibilities and options for required investments in new storage buildings to gain space for growing collections.

With best wishes
Dirk

Am 15.12.2021 um 15:35 schrieb Callomon,Paul:
Lucia's comments reminded me of another major caveat about compactors: if you're planning on using them for wet collections, at least in the USA, check with your fire marshal and insurers first. As she pointed out, in a serious fire a compacted wet collection without sufficient venting is an enormous fuel-air bomb. Ethanol burns fairly quickly anyway, but if it's pre-heated before encountering a flame, weakening or even popping the lids and filling the compactor with vapor, then an explosion becomes more likely and the whole building could go.

Paul Callomon
Collection Manager, Malacology and General Invertebrates
________________________________
Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University
1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia PA 19103-1195, USA
prc44 at drexel.edu<mailto:prc44 at drexel.edu> Tel 215-405-5096 - Fax 215-299-1170

From: Nhcoll-l <nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu><mailto:nhcoll-l-bounces at mailman.yale.edu> On Behalf Of rapp at inpa.gov.br<mailto:rapp at inpa.gov.br>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2021 9:23 AM
To: Douglas Yanega <dyanega at gmail.com><mailto:dyanega at gmail.com>; nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu<mailto:nhcoll-l at mailman.yale.edu>
Subject: Re: [Nhcoll-l] Compactors in collections

External.
I can't resist to add my comments after Douglas.

Yes, you have "literally to breathe down the necks of the people from the compactor company "! This expression is great and it was exactly my experience. Although I received the visitation of an engineer in compactors, the project assembled by them made me order for half extra budget of complements! The shelves came with an internal "channel" designed to keep the rigidity of the shelf, however, for alcohol collections the jars could turn!!! So, I had to order extra covers for these channels. I also had to order extra steel bars for protection to avoid the jars to fall from the shelves. The initial project reduced the number of shelves from 6 to 5 despite of all my observations. I had to order extra shelves and connections. Maybe it was just local incompetence, but compactor companies may be not familiar with our kind of storaged material.

I ended up gaining approx. 40% of space, what was great. I also order for holes, small openings, on the top shelves, to avoid excessive heat during fires. One of our Brazilian collections (Butantan) lost all the material inside compactors during a fire because the material "cooked" inside and the cabinets would not role with the heat. I hope I will never have to test if this idea will work or not...

cheers

Lucia Rapp Py-Daniel
Fish Colelction - INPA
Manaus, AM, Brazil

14 de dezembro de 2021 14:14, "Douglas Yanega" <dyanega at gmail.com<mailto:dyanega at gmail.com?to=%22Douglas%20Yanega%22%20%3cdyanega at gmail.com%3e>> escreveu:
On 12/14/21 7:58 AM, Ann Bogaerts wrote:
Hello everybody,
We wish to renovate our herbarium with 4 milj. specimens and we want to get some feedback from other institutions who already renovated or renewed their collection buildings.
One of our main questions is the use of compactors yes or no? So what is your opinion about this? How much space do you save using a compactor and how is it working with this kind of system? For which collections do you use it?
We are really interested in the do's and don'ts and it would also be nice if you could send us a picture of the compactors you use.

Briefly: our insect collection went from regular static insect cabinets to a compactor system in 2002. It almost doubled our storage capacity (instead of 7 aisles and 8 rows of cabinets, we now have 2 aisles and 13 rows of cabinets). That bought us a few decades' worth of expansion.

Liquid storage cabinets are in the static units to either side, and and microscope slides are in a narrow shelving unit in the middle; the 11 movable compactor units are only for cabinets of pinned specimens, and operated manually. In 18 years we have not needed any repairs, which is a far better track record than electric-powered compactor systems. Insects on pins are fragile but not as bad as people might think; we routinely ship specimens using postal delivery and only rarely experience significant damage.

The MAJOR caveat for compactors has to do with design and execution: we had to literally breathe down the necks of the people from the compactor company because they kept screwing up the blueprints and specs for the hardware dimensions in very minor ways, and there were also issues with pouring a layer of concrete on top of an existing floor. To illustrate how subtle but devastating a mistake can be, one of the things they didn't account for was that both sides of each moving unit had a knob that could be pulled out to engage the brake on that side. Those knobs stuck out an inch when fully retracted. We have two aisles, and each was calculated on the blueprints to be about 36 inches wide, and there are 6 moving compactor units on one side and 5 on the other. They failed to realize that their calculations had excluded the knobs, which subtracted 2 inches of space per unit. Had they proceeded with the installation as planned, the aisle on one side would have been only 24 inches, and only 26 inches on the other, which isn't even enough space to open the cabinet doors. I caught this mistake and had them machine the knobs an inch shorter so they retract almost flush with the side, instead of projecting; they are a little tricky to pull out, but at least we can work in the aisles. They similarly failed to account for the three inches in height that were added by the wheels of the undercarriage on the compactor units, but I didn't catch that mistake, so the tops of some cabinets would have run into some low-hanging ceiling ductwork that we had expected to be clear. We had to rebuild the ductwork before all the cabinets could be installed.

I advise anyone planning compactors to stay very actively engaged during the design process, and don't trust the contractors to get every little detail right. Be very wary in particular about the precision of dimensions, and maybe plan a few extra inches here and there if you can.

Peace,

-- Doug Yanega Dept. of Entomology Entomology Research Museum Univ. of California, Riverside, CA 92521-0314 skype: dyanega phone: (951) 827-4315 (disclaimer: opinions are mine, not UCR's) https://faculty.ucr.edu/~heraty/yanega.html<https://nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffaculty.ucr.edu%2F~heraty%2Fyanega.html&data=04%7C01%7Cprc44%40drexel.edu%7C025eeea5566e4a62f9bd08d9bfe3c0af%7C3664e6fa47bd45a696708c4f080f8ca6%7C0%7C0%7C637751807206023229%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000&sdata=%2BR2Rq3Ntz0gdHMeLA1CryW3IGfTvui%2FOj2KPHWigRv8%3D&reserved=0> "There are some enterprises in which a careful disorderliness is the true method" - Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chap. 82

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