01
Put the crusher in its own room line
The preparation chapter treats crushing as part of the analysis, not as a dirty corner of the instrument room. Rock is broken, split, and fed to ceramic plates. Minerals that cleave, such as mica, may then move to a ceramic or agate shatterbox until the sample passes 100 mesh. A 2011 USGS lecture tells trace-metal work to stay on agate or ceramic surfaces so the mill does not add metals. A bench chosen because it wipes easily misses that point: the control is the grinding surface, not the furniture coating.
The apparatus list also includes dry compressed air at about 40 pounds per square inch, sieves, and a mixer. Those are services, not a cabinet count. Ask whether this project crushes at all. A laboratory that receives pulps needs no jaw-crusher clearance, gravel bin, or drum for discarded clean-out rock. A laboratory that crushes ore-grade material needs a place for the quartzite, a place for the discarded fraction, and a cleaning rule. None of those places is the spectrometer bench.
02
Give the peroxide sinter a heat line and a dust line
Method M020 weighs 0.100 gram into a zirconium crucible, mixes 0.6 gram of dry sodium peroxide, and holds the mix under a heat lamp until the crucibles enter a muffle already at 450°C. After 30 minutes they cool into thick-walled fluoropolymer bottles, wait at least four hours with water, then receive lutetium standard and 25 percent nitric acid. The manual's scope says about 40 samples per person-day. That is staffing for this method, not a bench length.
Safety for that method puts digestions in a chemical hood and flux preparation in a dust hood, and staff must read the chemical hygiene plan and the safety data sheets. Bulletin 2144 uses the same sinter for rare earths in coal ash: 0.1 gram, sodium peroxide, a water leach, then nitric acid, reporting lanthanum through ytterbium from that solution. The furnace, the heat lamp, the cooling spot, and the dust hood are separate lines. A furnace bench without temperature, crucible metal, and hood responsibility collapses those decisions.
03
Keep the hydrofluoric dissolution off the sinter line
Bulletin 2144 does not dissolve every element the same way. Rare earths, hafnium, tantalum, and tungsten come from the peroxide sinter. A different list, including gallium, arsenic, lead, and uranium, comes from heating 0.2 gram with hydrochloric, nitric, perchloric, and hydrofluoric acids. The 1996 manual’s multi-element precautions match that second route: perchloric digestions in a perchloric hood that is washed down after the day’s use, and calcium gluconate gel on hand where hydrofluoric acid is used. Those precautions are not automatically part of the nitric-acid sinter.
The inquiry needs a yes-or-no. If work stops at the peroxide sinter and nitric acid, leave out a hydrofluoric cabinet, a perchloric hood, and a gel station. If the four-acid dissolution is included, those items get their own lines and the chemical hygiene plan is attached. Under 29 CFR 1910.1450 the employer must state how protective equipment will be shown to work, and must consider containment for particularly hazardous substances where appropriate. Appendices add no duties. Hood velocity stays blank until the plan names the check.
04
Separate the spectrometer from the dust
Both the sinter method and Bulletin 2144 describe a mass spectrometer that is sensitive to oxide overlaps and drift. That is an instrument fact, not a bench specification. What the furniture inquiry can record is location: the spectrometer does not share a bench with the jaw crusher, the ceramic mill, or the open peroxide flux. The 1996 preparation text already treats contamination between samples as enough to waste the analysis. Parking the instrument in the dust is a room error even before anyone argues about a worktop resin.
Heavy-liquid separation, also in that manual, is another optional line. Bromoform work is required to happen in a hood, with people able to recognize exposure symptoms. Many rare-earth materials rooms never run that separation. The checklist should ask, not assume. Support furniture for this zone is a chair, a clean writing surface for the run log, and storage for crucibles and bottles that is not the crushing bench. Specialist workstation dimensions wait until the instrument manual for this model is attached. A generic “instrument table” length is a placeholder, not a finding.
05
Type quantities only after the zones exist
A usable inquiry has one row per zone: receipt, crushing and ceramic or agate grinding, peroxide sinter, nitric leach, four-acid dissolution if selected, spectrometer, and waste. Each row says whether the zone is in this project, who supplies the hood or the furnace, and which services are building work. Out-of-scope rows stay visible and say not in scope. In-scope rows that still lack a chemical list, a load, or a drawing stay blank in the quantity column.
The 1996 branch safety policy requires a chemical hygiene plan and safety data sheets for every procedure that uses hazardous or toxic chemicals. It points at federal, state, and local duties without replacing them. The inquiry can ask for those documents. It cannot promise that a cabinet or a bench satisfies them. Distributor and contractor coordination is where the open lines meet a written scope. The furniture reply should answer the lines, not fold the blank cells into one model number.
Before pricing, check the distributor and contractor project support against the room and workflow conditions already recorded above.