Magnetic Stirrer Hot Plate Magnetic Mixer 1000ml Lab Hot Plate with Magnetic Stirrer, 2400 RPM Magnetic Stir Plate with 4 Stir Bars and Support Stand, Max 158°F Hotplate Magnetic Stir

Works well after yr still works

I don't have a ton of experience with chemistry or lab work, so maybe there's something I'm missing since this is obviously priced as a "budget" stirrer. But it works exactly as intended and I don't really see any weak points or issues. The magnetic stirrer works exactly as I would expect in any beaker size from 100ml to 1000ml. The hot plate heats. The speed adjustment adjusts speed. The support stand thing holds a thermometer just great and is easy to adjust. I do a lot of tinkering in the world of film photography, darkroom printing, and old-timey alternative processes for printing (kallitype, salted paper, etc.). When testing a new black & white film developer formulation recently, I needed to make a solution of phenidone in propylene glycol. Phenidone famously takes a really long time to fully dissolve, and that can be helped along by heating the propylene glycol. I've done this once by hand. I microwaved the glycol in the beaker, and stirred by hand with a glass rod for what seemed like eternity. It worked, and I told myself that I would get a magnetic stirrer if I ever had to do it again. Hard to overstate how much better the process goes with this item. Stick beaker of glycol on plate. Drop in stir bar. Set thermometer in to monitor temp. Dump in phenidone powder. Turn on stirring and heat. Let it do all the work for the next 30 minutes while I chill, listen to a podcast, and monitor the thermometer so I know when to shut off the hot plate. SO MUCH easier and less unpleasant. I'll probably just be using this to mix all my chemistry going forward. It's so much more convenient.

Temperature Control, you have to be very careful because this thing requires you to be there watching it constantly, zone out for 30 minutes and your going to over heat your solution by a large margin. I really regret getting this one, but it's my fault. I didn't realize how easy it would be to overheat things with it. The Magnetic Stirrer is almost useless for my use-case because these Magnetic Stirrer's don't really function properly for anything thicker then water. For a plant extract, these Magnetic Stirrer's are completely useless, the only thing that would have made it useful for me would have been if it had Temperature Control, which it doesn't. Regardless of the fact it is useless too me, I can't actually give it a bad review because that was on me. My 1000ml flask is to tall for the stand it came with, the top of the stand sits about an inch below the lip of my flask.

Work great.

First off, this works. It gets hot and it has a strong spinning magnet. Thing is, it gets REAL hot eventually and there's no control other than turning off the heating element. If you need this at precision temps it's not for you. I use it to liquify and mix distillates, which it works wonders for. You need to pay attention and get it off when it's fluid, so you don't harm any actives though, bc again there's no way to know how hot it is at any given moment. It mixes very well and the speed controller also works nicely. This is something I need to use maybe every 3 months or so, and it's great for that.

The stirrer works well with liquids ( mixture of water solubles) from half pints sealed containers to a one liter erlenmeyer flask. The controls are responsive and the heat plate also works.

I have a background in chemistry, and I am very impressed with what I received for what I paid. I have used half a dozen brands & models of mag stirrers in my time, and this is my favorite I have ever worked with. Looks like a factory in the Soviet Union designed a magnetic stirring device in 1965 that just WORKED, and never bothered updating the design at all in the decades since (this unit probably actually is second-world import based on the instruction manual's stilted, translated English). Bear in mind that this is not a precision instrument. If you need your stirring to be at an EXACT speed, or if you need your heat to be at an EXACT temperature, this is not for you. It's a HOTplate, not a thermostat. Bear in mind that the heating function MAY be unsafe / a fire hazard if there's no liquid in a beaker on top of the plate to evaporatively cool it. Please use a digital thermometer to monitor the heating AT ALL TIMES. At any rate, if you need something that'll stir like a workhorse over a wide range of viscosities for days or weeks at a time if necessary, then this is perfect. Would buy again.

Product was delivered incomplete - lacks the upright support post. Obtaining the missing part seems to be an impossibility. The magnetic stirrer itself works very well, and is in use in the laboratory without the missing part. How can we get the part???