DUO 008 B

The eduards pump started to make vary scary sounds.
Got a really cool (ehh, getting quite hot actually) second hand Pfeiffer & Balzers DUO 008 B.
Still don't have 5E-8 mbar, which is what I need, mass spectro meter shows about 60% H2O, and some junk at higher masses (35...45, probably hydrocarbon), N2 was at 1E-8, so no leaks.
Conclusion: I should do better cleaning, and bake out.
In the rack you can see the second hand water pump (from a central heating system) and the car radiator (Toyota), seems a bit of an overkill for cooling the turbo pump, but the cooling system is going to pump water though a heat exchanger for the oil cooling of the electromagnets.
It can handle about 2kW if the fan is turned on.

Turbo pump and sensors mounted in the rack

Vacuum on wheelzz

QMG 064 to computer

The QMG 064 mass spectrometer can be completely controlled with a computer by using the rs232 interface.

If anyone would ever like to connect a QMG 064 to a computer, this should be the cable:

on the DB9 connector connect pin 4 and 6 with each other.
DB9 pin 2 -> DB25 pin 2
DB9 pin 3 -> DB25 pin 3
DB9 pin 5 -> DB25 pin 7
on the DB25 connector connect pin 4 and 5 with each other, and connect pin 6, 8 and 20 with each other.

Set the "code 10" at value 9 (9600 baud) on the QMG 064 and put it in terminal mode by setting "code 5" to 3.

On the unix system (assuming /dev/ttyS0 is your serial port):

user@system:~ $ stty -echo -ixon 9600 -F /dev/ttyS0

If you have other non standard default tty settings, here are all the parameters:

user@system:~ $ $ stty -a -F /dev/ttyS0 

speed 9600 baud; rows 0; columns 0; line = 0; intr = ^C; quit = ^\; erase = ^?; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>; eol2 = <undef>; swtch = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S; susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0; -parenb -parodd cs8 hupcl -cstopb cread clocal -crtscts -ignbrk -brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr -icrnl -ixon -ixoff -iuclc -ixany -imaxbel -iutf8 -opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0 -isig -icanon iexten -echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop -echoprt echoctl echoke
 

Be back soon with a ruby interface for the QMG 064, and rrdtool graphs!

Partial pressure gauge

Got two QMG 064:

The sensors were dirty, tried to clean them, one sensor died, the other survived.
Close up of the filament:

Strange green stuff:

 The quadrupole

 A working QMG 064:

Aluminium caps

Aluminium disks for closing the upper and lower hole.
These are 300mm diameter, so I can use M20 holes to mount them.
I have to wait between every M20 hole because the pillar drill is getting too hot :(

Water pump

A second hand unused water pump (normally used for heating), for only 20 euro's!
It will be used for circulating the cooling water for the turbo pump.

Connecting the hemispheres

There isn't any room for normal M20 bolts to connect the hemispheres. To fix this I made 4 of these:

The lower side has M20 thread, the upper half is split in 4 and has M7 thread inside, the bolt has M7x1 at the tip but for the rest it's M8x1.
When the upper hemisphere is placed over them, fastening the M8 bolts will widen the 4 segments and position the upper hemisphere.