hi rick, in one of the junkyards that i frequent, i run into hi vacuum coating chambers often, the castoffs of a local optical coating company. invariably, they are large stainless chambers, say 3 feet or so in diameter and say 2 feet deep, with a couple of portholes. they are designed to mate with a godofful hunk of machinery with tons of mechanics/electric/electronics, all half disembowled, nothing that one would try to pick up and turn into anything, too far gone. i believe that there is another end of this spectrum tho, that of a reasonable sized chamber made out of a found pressure vessle with a flanged end with a true surface, a corresponding base plate also found, a roughing pump, and a diffusion pump, and the electricals with suitable penetrations into the chamber. a viewport or two would be desirable. etc etc. i have picked up a couple of high vacuum pumps over the years, one which i once measured to 1/10 micron of mercury. can't remember how many tor that is, but at the time, i figured i could do playing around coating if i wanted. the rest i could build with luck in junkyards and persistence. havn't gotten around to it tho. i figure there are other joe mcgee guys like me out there, some of them could also do this thing. happy new year, tom leech

• Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: need advice about constructing vacuum coating system - sloanpk - January 10, 2001 - 03:01 UTC