Pipe connections, (for Adam Parker)

[Jon Rosenstiel]

Here's a shot of the underside of my vacuum table. On the floor is the Leybold roughing pump. (Keeps the pump vibration out of the stand). The 1" pipe teeing off runs up to a diaphragm valve which then connects to the vacuum manifold/chamber.

To the left of the tee is a normal hardware store variety solder-in ball valve. I replaced the packing with a o-ring so the valve doesn't leak to the atmosphere. This valve doesn't really seal that well from port to port though. It would be a bad choice on a non-diffusion pumped system. It will probably stay there unitl I can find a reasonably priced "real vacuum" valve!

Next to the left is a TC sensor, then the hose to the diff pump. The diff pump is an old 2'" water cooled Veeco. (Those two small plastic lines run up to the sink)

Between the diff pump and the gate valve is a flange adaptor I had to make. (Look for "valve flange type?" further down this forum).

My first vacuum system, (before Fusor), had no valves. When I wanted to open the system I had to wait half an hour for the diff pump to cool. This wasn't the handiest way to do things, but it worked well for what it was. (I used that half hour cool down time to contemplate what went wrong and how to fix it)!

To build this system has taken me the better part of an year. (Waiting for vacuum parts nobody else wanted to show up on Ebay)!

As I mentioned in another post the copper pipe has so far worked well for me. It's really easy fabricate just about anything one wants. (Not to mention that copper is a joy to solder)!

I should also mention that built this system with other vacuum related experiments in mind. (There's more to vacuum that just Fusion)!

Jon Rosenstiel