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Investigating the dispersion of fine solid particles in an explosion required the handling of extremely fragile compressed particle wafers. A major challenge was how to load the wafers into the test channel, as they would disintegrate if handled by hand. Several die presses were designed to make a wafer out of a measured mass of powder through compression, matching the square cross-section of the test channel. To examine effects at the wafer edges, a screw driven device which mounted to the channel flange was designed to push the delicate wafer into a round channel section, completely filling the cross-section.