Homemade Vacuum Pump

**suther51** · Jan 30, 2019, 07:54 PM

TM51, to bad you are not around the corner. My boss has a pile of hdpe drops from 4" to 36" or bigger (pipe that is) nearly the size of a small house. I can not imagine what he is saving the drops for but they have come in handy as concrete forms several times. The businesses use for the hdpe is as rock shield for insulated (polyiso foam, foam glass, mineral wool, areogell, ect. ) steam lines, chilled water, some times cryogenics. Got the old electric cookstove from the house for the shop, thinking of trying to make some of the melted n molded plastic projects I have seen here.
Eric

**Toolmaker51** · Jan 30, 2019, 08:15 PM

I moved from SoCal, a veritable wonderland of resources to Missouri...I knew it was different but also figured mid-west implied 'central'. Yeah, in geography, lol, not like the yellow pages.
So when hearing or thinking of that line of movie script "Well ain't this place is a geographical oddity . . . Two weeks from everywhere!", I'm consoled Chicago is only eight hours drive. And been three times in past couple months, getting what I can't find local.

**PJs** · Feb 1, 2019, 10:34 AM

The idea of a tranny blanket is good, but think that a heavy carpet remnant would be suitable too. Depending how you build the cradle for it perhaps some SS mesh as a liner? My only concern was for the integrity of your used, massive bell jar. Another thing I thought of was a diffusion pump for the volume you are dealing with. You can find old Veeco Helium leak detectors at auctions, even ebay that have diffusion pumps in them and seen them for a few hundred duckets although Diffusion pump oil is pricey. A source for compressors might be a restaurant refer? The thing is I don't think you need to to achieve the vacuum between galaxies to do what you want depending on your fluid for impregnation.

Be Warm and holler if I can help bounce some ideas around.

PJ

**Toolmaker51** · Feb 1, 2019, 03:25 PM

"...vacuum between galaxies..." lol, pretty severe description of nonexistent atmosphere. The jar is still boxed, unused, from a distinguished federal manufacturing plant. No other bidders. The carpet remnant is a better solution than race blanket, especially with a layer of wire mesh.
The mention of Veeco brought back memories building HFET's literally by the score, from wirebonding, belt soldering the lids, vacuum leak and PIND tests.
Us toolmakers get around, but no Beach Boy's song about it