Well, I cracked vacuum tonight. I had a wonderful birthday dinner for a wonderful friend to attend to, so I didn't have a terrible amount of time. I switched the 20 amp plug out for a normal 16 amp plug and had a mild heart attack when I found red, black and blue wires. <sigh> Seconds later I had figured out the obvious polarity (mind like a trap, I say) and had it wired up. Nice to see high amperage wire gauge again. (tee hee).
As
you can see from this picture, I got the beast pumped down to 20 microtorr.
This was after about an hour and a half on the turbo. The chamber is too
big and the whole system needs to be baked for a couple of hours, but I'm pretty
happy. I got down to 80 microtorr after about a half hour. The system
pumped down to 100 microtorr very quickly - something like 15 minutes. But I
think this will do until I build another chamber. I may go down to Duniway
and see if they'll take this chamber as a trade in for the original glass bell
jar that I was supposed to get with the system. <sigh> Shake and
bake time.
To the right is a picture of the magnets from doom. I keep forgetting about them sitting there on my table in the far corner. I keep wanting to put the camera down right on top of the box containing 20 of these guys. Geesh. I need work.
So I laid out the bars and I'm going to start milling the 0.25" bar for the cage. That'll be mildly entertaining. I have to mill the bar at an angle so the pieces fit oh so nice together. Yep. But that'll be an interesting set up. Then I can start welding and getting the cage together.
I've thought more about the electron gun, and I think I'll just buy a black and white TV from K-Mart like Mike suggested. My plan is to mount the salvaged gun in a nice tube that mounts on one of the quick fit ports I have. That seems a heck of a lot easier than trying to build a mount completely in the chamber like I originally thought would be easier. <arg> The tube inside diameter is fairly small, so I'll have to have decent focus and shift the grid mount so a magnet hole is axial to the port.
I dug around and managed to find some old power supplies I hadn't seen in a while. I was very pleased to find a nice HP 0-60V, 6 amp regulated DC power supply. More than enough to create some pretty pictures. Tomorrow I have two activities to attend so I won't get to play until later in the evening. But...
Leave a comment