Vacuum chamber for optical spectroscopy part 3

Okay, so I've got all the parts for the vacuum chamber and assembled the whole thing.

I've started by assembling the window. It is a 3mm quartz plate, sealed with two rubber o-rings (that will be later replaced with fluoride rubber ones)

After that I've screwed down the windows part to the chamber body, sealing this joint with another o-ring. To the vacuum flange an vacuum valve was fitted (Leybold full metal manual valve).

So assembly is done, now for testing it we attached the chamber to pumping station consisting of a rough vacuum pump and turbomolecular drag pump. Pumping station is attached via an metal flexible hose. The pump was left for ~1h to evacuate the chamber.

After one hour of pumping we achieved pressure equal to 1,6 *10e-5 mbar. It is quite good result for that pump. On a normal cryostat pumped for an hour we achieve 5,4*10e-5 mbar, so the results are comparable (the cryostat is slightly bigger). The only one thing to test is the vacuum tight sealing. I'll take a look at the chamber after some time to see if it's still under vacuum.

Some new stuff just arrived

So, I've got some fresh stuff from the workshop. Still in as-received state, but this is a big step for now. Just see how blue-prints turn into reality:

PCB for the ammeter arrived! Not yet populated, as I'm still waiting for the ICs (should be here next week). I hope that everything will fit, as some drills are smaller than expected

Sample holder is also ready. It turned out very nice. Maybe not exactly as in the render, but the crucial parts are ok. Also it is blackened, to limit light scattering from it.

Also the vacuum chamber parts are done, but I still have to put it together - expect some pictures soon.

Sample holder

Some viewers say that I'm getting lazy. To prove them wrong, recently I've drawn a sample holder, that I need to fix my samples in my measurement setup. When everything will be finished I post some pictures of the whole thing, but now - only a drawing from Autodesk Inventor :).

This thing will be used to fix an microscope slide (3" x 1") in a 3 axis stage from Thorlabs. The stage is motorized using linear motorized actuators, also from Thorlabs. This will allow me to automatize a big part of my measurements. Stay tuned.