What's going on? Wax flows upwards. Not warm, cold...

[Peter Panussi]

The Post brought me two Jets, two cheap occasions, and both bottles are problem childs.
The bases and caps are ok. That said, it was still a good buy, cause of the reasonable price I paid.

The trouble with the yellow one is obvious: It lost some liquid on the way (the moron didn't check it before sending. The bottle's alu lid was rotatable through 90°, it was simply not sealed properly.) The wax is tattered. And the liquid begins to cloud. 

The issue of the black one is stranger. Base and cap in mint condition, crystal clear blue liquid (better in real than on the picture). Problem: The wax moved up 15mm and is not in contact with the bottom anymore, it sits above. As there is no liquid underneath it, the wax must stick to the globe everywhere around.

To bring it back to bottom I put the bottle in hot waterbath, while rotating the bottle between my hands (saw this in some mathmos video - "readjusting the coil"), and in 30 seconds the block sank down, with some liquid pouring in the cavity simultanously.

Then I put the bottle on the jet base and turned on the lamp. 15 Minutes later most of the lava was completely detached from the coil and was swimming on the upside of the bottle!

I did not see the actual process of uplifting, only the results. It looks like the wax is lighter than the liquid even in cold state?

Turning the bottle around, the wax starts wandering to the other side (then the coil falls down on it and stops it from further uplifting).

Well, my best ideas are...

- to bring in some distilled water, until the liquid is lighter and the cold wax sinks, and then turn on the bulb and see what happens - maybe that's all and it works again?

- to save the liquid anywhere else, fill in distilled water, turn on the bulb, hope the wax stays at bottom until fully melted, and then epsom salts (and SLES), until it starts flowing?

How can the wax become lighter than the liquid, without loosing any parts?

[Keith]

In the video linked here

http://oozinggoo.ning.com/forum/topics/mathmos-astro-production-video

Globes are given a one hour bath at 160 degrees Fahrenheit, completely melting the wax.  It might just be the cure your globe needs.

[Johnny]

may be a couple of reasons , 1, the wax is old and often see it in very old cloudy bottles the wax seperated, or 2 the bottle master fluid has been replaced and the density is thicker making the wax float upwards,

if the bottle top is unsealed you could remove a small amount of fluid ( while cold ) replace it with distilled water, screw cap on and the turn upside down few times to mix the fluid, see if it does it again.

[Mark]

It is kind of weird.

Like Johnny said, it's acting like the fluid may have been replaced, but is does look like a genuine mathmos colour/fluid. 

I've owned a lot of mathmos lamps, and the only time I've seen that was when I put later mathmos fluid over the wax in a much older crestworth norton lava lamp. The wax very quickly went straight to the top and just stayed there. Put the original fluid back in and it behaved itself again. 

[Peter Panussi]

Thanks for the advice!

The flluid is definitely original, preowner of the lamp was a technical naive girl, she didn't do anything. The cap is still sealed. She also reported the lamp as "going pretty well" -> that was last month.

I know these super-cloudy bottles, were the wax has split in two parts, one swimming, one at the bottom.
But here fluid and wax look fine, not used very much. Somehow the wax changed it's density, without loosing any parts to anywhere. Strange.

Could it have anything to do with the coil? At the beginning of the warming process, the wax maybe did not sit properly on the ground, and first thing that happened, was the coil detaching from the rest and sinking down, and then the upstream of warm water floatet the wax upwards?  but why does it stay there?

Diluting sounds promising, only I'd like to keep the original fluid as long as possible.

Keith's idea, waterbathing of the whole bottle may also be worth a try. If things go well, the wax will melt, sink to the bottom, settle and enclose (?) the coil again. But if not, the molten wax will stay on top of the bottle.

I want to do it maximum scientific this time, and want to measure the liquids density, before I change anything. I bought a hydrometer online, and it will be here soon after the weekend.

Then maybe I compare it with the density of my other three, well-working jet bottles. If there are bigger differences I assume the liquid is the problem. If there are no differences, I have to concentrate on the wax.

I will post further insights, when I got the hydrometer.

[Peter Panussi]

If anybody is interested in the solution: Here is what I did...

I poured out the original liquid and put the bottle with the wax on the lamp and turned it on.

A few minutes later the wax clump began to slip to the bottom, and there it melted (within 20-30 minutes).

Then I let the wax cool and harden, the coil now ingrained in the wax again.

I could have used the blue liquid again, but I have two more blue-green jet bottles, so I decided to do a clear-green bottle: tap water, 4-5 drops of SLES (33%), heating, epsom salts until it begins to flow. Cool down again, starting over again, finetuning of epsom salts.

Et voila: it works nicely!!

Heating the wax:

Cooled down:

First flow, more epsom salts needed...

After cooling for 3 hours and melting again, plus finetunig of epsom salts:
Nice flow!!

Now I have to do the longtterme cycling for 1-2 weeks, and if it still works after that, uncloudy & with a nice flow, I thinkt the raparation worked.

But what had happended initially to the wax or to the liquid, so that the wax went upwards? This is still miraculous to me. I have the suspicion of the coil beeing detached from the wax was the problem. I measured the density of the blue liquid: 1,016 at 22° Celsius (68° F) - not so much, but close to the density of my other jet bottles.

[kero48]

Nice job brining, looks good in the photos.

[Tim Gill]

Good to know a water change sorted it out, I have only seen this issue with lamps where the wax is old and dead as the constant heating and cooling over the lamps life affects the wax raver then the water. It may have been a dodgy lamp from the start and its only now it managed to get fixed.