A Low Energy Branch for the MARA separator, MARA-LEB, is under construction at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. It will be used to purify and study exotic beams initially via nuclear decay and laser spectroscopy. Two experiments have been performed using the MARA separator to determine the acceptance of the gas cell and to assess the feasibility of future experiments at the new facility. Products of different reaction mechanisms have been produced and their transmission from the focal plane of MARA into the LEB gas cell has been estimated. In one experiment, medium-mass nuclei have been produced in fusion–evaporation reactions. In a second experiment, with the primary goal of studying the non-fusion reaction dynamics, heavy target-like fragments from multi-nucleon transfer reactions have been produced. Production cross sections have been measured and are presented in this work.