Hi! I do Helium Mass Spectrometer repair and maintenance for a living. These older Pfeiffer units are somewhat of a collaboration between them and Inficon. The spectrometer tube and calibrated leak are both Inficon models which were licensed to Adixen-Alcatel which would later have their vacuum division purchased by Pfeiffer. For a hobbyist/home user having an Inficon spec tube is great as you can expect the filaments to last basically forever. They run reasonably high voltages but incredibly tiny amperages compared to every other brand and also have a far larger ion beam of relatively lower strength. The big failure points on those units are the pumps (those mini rotary vane pumps are awful in general) and the pirani vacuum gauges. You had oil in the valve block because the anti-suckback on the pump failed. This means that if it isn't rebuilt every time you turn the unit off you run a huge risk of pulling oil from the pump to the highest point of vacuum, which is your turbo. You mention at one point using a silicone tubing. Do not do this. Silicone and helium mass specs do not mix. Silicone is highly permeable to helium and also hangs onto it an releases it as a virtual leak relative to its density. You should always be using Buna-N (80 durometer is recommended) or Viton for seals and Tygon or metal tubing for hoses (hardware store vinyl tubing does work but usually has lots of mold release and outgasses like crazy for the first few hundred hours). I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have on this. It's always good to see people interested in Helium Mass Spectrometers.
@@AdvancedTinkeringThis comment said what I was suspecting.. that the oil from the roughing pump might have been pulled backwards into the turbo pump when the unit was shut off and allowed to stand with high vacuum in the chamber.. I was unaware of an "anti-suckback valve", so I was going to suggest a procedural solution - "never do that" - have a vacuum relief valve in the experimental apparatus, run this devise for the duration of an experiment cycle, then end the cycle by opening the vacuum relief valve before powering down this unit.
I have two of these pumps and the anti-suckback on these pump are not the best system. Better on little bigger Edwards fex where you can see the valve it self covering the inlet, on the pfeiffer pumps you can not see it since its internal.
Videos of this calibre can never be too long! This was a fascinating and nail-biting teardown and repair of a piece of equipment I had no idea even existed. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain so much of what you were doing.
i would not want to know how much this thing would have cost, its always a gamble with rarities like this, either you end up needing to save in the 4 figures, or find one floating on a (for youtube to remain unnamed) site for 50€ from someone who has no clue what it is. ive also never seen such a cute turbomolecular, its a very very compact setup that way. amazing video as always! I do love learning from reverse engineering high tech stuff, espeically if its still in one piece haha
I hoped to see the pcb and the electronic because I enjoy seeing scientific equipment and measurement circuits. But I am happy for you since dismantiling the control corcuits was not needed. Enjoyed each second of the video, it is great
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the video! You may actually get lucky in the future. According to the error log of the machine the 24V supply for the mass spectrometer is low. It doesn't seem to effect the machine in any way so I decided not to mess with it. But if it fails or some other problems show, I will have to take a look at the electronics.
Your videos are always fascinating. I'm impressed you got that pump stripped down and put back together, that looked seriously fiddly. The part you didn't know the name of is called a cable gland in English. Looking forward to the next video already
Once upon a time I was a young engineer and I specified, installed and qualified a GEA system for two such MS devices. I‘m pretty sure it was the same manufacturer but the turbo was external and we had it integrated in to the DCS of the plant. It was very useful for detecting Si-Oil leaks and also gathering data on our products that somehow nobody wanted (if validated: never touch!). I love this type of kit. Thank you for sharing and warm regards to Elias 😊
A side note on oil.. I recall walking up to our screw compressors (yes, the Japanese ones by Mycom..) as I had heard a slight howling noise. Instead of clear oil I found a whitish emulsion in the freaking sight glass. As we were in the crucial steps during drying I didn’t hit the E-Stop, I notified my boss and asked our vendor if they „had one one stock, we may need a drop-in replacement very soon“. We ran that compressor for weeks on end, it howled and sung churning „milk“. I can’t remember what made that oil go white but it was something to do with water. That‘s perfect when you‘re using oil as a lubricant and a sealant. Great stuff. We had no deviations, pump-down was completed within the vendors specifications - we then found out, that a stretch of piping was not large enough on the suction side. We also had the gunk analysed in the pump, until today I wonder where that water came from. It was literally H2O in oil with minor impurities but not what one would expect from the Ca-laden cooling water used in the jacket of the compressors. Anyhow - those compressors are expensive but nothing compared with our revenue/batch or a lost day manufacturing. We had two compressors per unit, they were used for the condensor in one circuit and for temperature ctrl of the mantle and shelves in the unit. If anyone needs a compressor that will compress just about any gas and also tolerate a bit of water of unknown origin, then head over to Mycom. You‘ll find a video on PascalAIR here, -100C with ambient air as heat transfer medium..
I work with HIVAC systems in the semiconductor industry. We use helium leak detectors all the time. I found this video very interesting as well as your other turbo videos. Great job!!!
Very interesting rebuild, great job! I have 2 old turbopumps that I scavenged in working condition many years ago, but I have not dared to try to start them before cleaning. We used to rent part of a small clean room in the basement of the then new MC2 center at Chalmers University here in Sweden. The room was used soley for reconditioning their turbopumps and similar stuff. The cleaning and service of these seemed to be a science in itself. They oven baked everything before assembly. You mentioned silicone tubing, it was tried as a return system to He liquifier in the building but was found to be useless, very permeable for He so it is perhaps not the best choice in Your case. I have a small Edwards He sniffer that has proved very useful. Many polymers leak He as crazy, has been a useful demonstrator for some of my work on toxic chemical transfer systems. It has different applications and for a vaccum systems You need to slightly over pressurize the system with He and look for leaks with the detector. Vaccum seals etc may behave differently under overpressure which can be a problem. Your unit looks really wonderful, very pretty build! I would nevertheless perhaps consider lifting out the oil pump and place it on the floor, this may reduce future oil ingress to the turbopump. But I guess the vacuum line needs to be fairly short for prompt response of the detector.
Bist n krasser Typ. Respekt. Ich habe extrem viel Spaß an Deinen Videos und habe schon ne Menge durch Dich gelernt. Für mich nahe am modernen Universalgelehrten. :-)
I'm very jealous of your new toy! Excellent job on the repair, I was on the edge of my seat watching you disassemble and reassemble the turbo. Quality entertainment, haha.
I'm working is plasma physics field, and my Ph.D. thesis was a new method of using such helium leak detector. Since it just really precise mass-spectrometer for 4 a.m.u. we eventually made it measure, quite precice, the amount of helium atoms (and deuterium molecules) passing throught it. It always strikes me why nobody figured it out before.
I use the same Device. Be careful with the Display. Pfeiffer told me there's no more spare part available anymore. In the way it is mounted it by factory it can be damaged easily.
That little screw you had in middle of oil cartridge to help lift it threw me off at first. I never saw that being put back, but it was never there to begin with :)
You're performing CPR on the system. As you found out, and I assume you got the unit for free, it was already dead. You can't 'kill' it anymore. (As one my CPR instructors called it, they're already dead, you can't make them any deader). Had your attempt failed, it would still be fundamentally dead. But now it's alive! Have yourself a frankenstein moment and a beer :) Congrats!
A lapel mic doesn't _need_ to be wireless to work fine; if plugging a wired one into your camera directly doesn't work you can connect it to your phone and record your audio on that and then put it together afterward. Clapping your hands is a good marker to sync the tracks if your software won't do it automatically.
4:43 in and I'm thinking someone changed the filter etc and didn't refill the oil, this was followed by someone running it dry... 8:08 oh... it is SO much worse.
My traditional adjustment for helium flkw is using a blunted hypodermic needle, flow should be just enough to feel on your wetted upper lip. This is plenty for course location. Fine location is adjusted by bubbling in water. BTW, cheap balloon-grade helium is more than good enough!
9:22 It does not really ruin the TMP, unless it happens when it's at full rpm. Otherwise it just results in an annoying and cumbersome cleaning where the bearing also need to be cleaned very good and then re-lubed or re-greased with the right oil or grease.
Where can I find the community you asked for help when you took the bearing screw out? I am getting started with UHV equipment and such a community would just be amazing... Anyways; great video you made! Glad I found your channel!
This leak detector design is just nuts. Definitely not the german engineering we get used to. The TMP should be always higher than the RVP otherwise this happens. With this layout, under normal operation the RVP slowly fills up the TMP with oil. Without the help of gravity this will happen again. Or try to make a U turn with a longer vacuum hose, where the bottom of the U goes below the inlet level of the TMP. The oil in the felt came from the RVP of course. I have never seen a Pfeiffer DUO which was not leaky... Repalce it with a Pfeiffer membrane pump, if u have any. A TMP with a drag stage works with a membrane pump as well. And by the way, replace the rotary vane pump's starting capacitor. In case of failure, this type of starting cap can burst into flames. Trust me, once it almost burned down our lab.
The oil you lube the bearing with DOES absolutely matter. If it has a to high viscosity, as with the rough vacuum pump, the bearing will run warmer and could deteriorate the oil to such level that it will eventually seize. Real turbo oils have a very low viscosity and special additives that rough pump oils normally don't have.
Great video. Immense respect for being to able to basically take that thing apart. This video shows validates my immense dislike for oil in vacuum systems ;) Is that leak detector one where you can switch to use hydrogen instead of helium for more economical testing? That vessel at the end is indeed a beauty. The number of ports on the top and the big window promise a fancy experiment.
@@AdvancedTinkering That's too bad. I know that other Pfeiffer ones can do it, so I speculated it might be somewhere in the options, but it's probably not too big of a financial hit on a hobby scale to use helium.
If it wasn't contaminated, we'd have never seen inside this amazing device...So nothing is inherently "bad". ... just thinking I was rather pleased when I managed to fix my angle grinder. ;)
Just a question... Perhaps resp. for shure that has been talked about somewhere, but I have not found my answer yet.... How is your oilmanagement for the rotary vane pumps which are used as "last" vacuum step? I mean as there every molecule of water comes along there should relatively fast be a saturation of the pump oil with moisture, or not? I am refrigeration technician and have just gotten a new vacuum pump from FieldPiece, where exactly that is the topic. Redundant oil tanks with valves and lids and so on....To keep the oil from saturating with moisture while standing off duty as it gets harder to take away moisture when the difference between the partial pressures of the water gets lower and lower over time...How do you handle that? Just frequently changing oil or do you have an engineered way to go as well as everywhere else? :-)
You're right, moreover the system doesn't have to be very small in fact. But don't expect achieving really high vacuum levels with this approach, - even though the TMP is present in the system its pumping speed is severely reduced by the valve block cross sections. With really small volumes and long times you could reach some 10^(-5)-10^(-6) mbar, but with larger chambers the feasible limit is set by the rough pump with its ~10^(-3) mbar limit.
Hey, ich hatte letzte Woche ein ähnliches Problem, eine Pfeiffer Hipace 80 hatte sich nach dem Abschalten einer Testkammer mit dem Öl aus der Vorpumpe vollgesaugt. Der Rotor ließ sich nur noch ganz zäh drehen. Ich habe dann die Belüftungsschraube entfernt und die Pumpe seitlich gelagert - so konnten ca. 20 -30ml Öl rauslaufen. Dann habe ich mehrfach Bremsenreiniger in die Pumpe gesprüht und dann gleich wieder rauslaufen lassen. Der Rotor lief nun wieder frei. Dann Habe ich den Einlass verschlossen und die Pumpe wieder an die Vorpumpe gehangen und eine Stunde nur die Vorpumpe pumpen lassen. Danach habe ich dann die Turbo zugeschaltet und diese läuft als wäre nichts passiert. Ursprünglich hatte ich auch vor die Pumpe zu zerlegen und zu reinigen - aber nun geht sie so zurück in den Pumpenstand. Die wird dort dann wieder mehrere Monate durchlaufen.
Awesome video! Cool to see the inside of a turbo molecular pump. Do you think it would be possible to repurpose the pumps to something else or do you think this will be a useful tool to have for future projects?
Thank you! One could probably make a flange that fits to the custom ports on the turbomolecular pump to adapt it to a CF or KF flange. But I definitely want to keep the leak detector. It's a useful piece of equipment and the chances to find another pump that fits the unit are slim to none.
Would it be possible to modify the System into a "normal" mass spectrometer to let's sas connect to a GC system? And from what i saw in the Video the built in MS only features a magnetic sector?
It's a fixed system only tuned to see He3/He4, it doesn't sweep. If you had a Residual Gas Analyzer(RGA) connected to a normal vacuum system though, you could. They're tiny self-contained mass specs designed for process monitoring, and they usually sweep from 0 to 50, 80, 100, or 300 amu.
I didn't scrape the rotor but the rings holding the stators in place. They don't spin the pump is put back together. And even if, I don't think the few micrograms of material removed would influence the balance by a noticeable amount.
I've tried to repair a similar leak detector a few month ago the electronic part was dead so I recoverd only the two pump and I still have the mass spectrometer part if you are interested I can send it to you 😊
Thank you for the offer! But I don't think a have a use for a mass spectrometer. Nevertheless I appreciate it! I'm holding my eyes open for a RGA. That would be very cool to have.
@@AdvancedTinkering I'll make you know if I found one in my labs bin's ! By the way your work is really interesting and I would love to work with you on this kind of projects!
@@AdvancedTinkering I'm currently working on a pulse tube refrigerator based on hyperspace pirate design. I'm also trying to make the radiative cooling paint from nighthawkinlight. A PVD reactor could be an interesting project 🤔
17:31 Of course they don't because then the customer can fix them and are not forced to buy a new one for a much higher price. You are a very bad customer if you fix the pump.
Maybe we can make a deal? I'm always missing a few screws when I put things back together >_ I don't get it too, as if a manufacturer would have a disadvantage if publishing schematics, construction drawings or disassembling/maintenance manuals. If manufacturers fear they could just be copied, than I have bad news, the others don't need manuals or schematics to copy stuff. In my opinion having all those documents accessible would be a reason to buy from this and not another manufacturer. Just imagine we would have those fine schematics in the back of our devices like we used to have "just" 50 years ago, if I belief the legends. But at least we're doing some baby steps in the right (to repair) direction lately.... After watching the whole video ;) I take back what I said. Publishing those manuals for a turbo vac would be financial/company suicide. It would animate people to disassemble the turbo vac and no one in their right mind should disassemble such a crazy complicated assembly
Oil has no business being inside system like this. Get a dry forepump! The molecular drag part is in 3 stages. Many of the rotors are made in ONE PIECE to eliminate contamination getting in between parts. They are first machined from block of aluminum (cylinder with slots) on lathe, followed by EDM fabrication of the blades. That's why the stators are split. In older pumps, the stators were full-round & rotor stages & stators had to be assembled TOGETHER.
@@AdvancedTinkering In this case the leak rate was huge with paper like that. Once I was involved were there was a very small leak in a chamber, hardly noticeable but it had to be taken care of. I used a helium detector and I strongly suspected 2 KF connectors since the rest was CF. When I got close to one of them so did it went from about one beep a sec to absolutely screaming. Opened the connector up and It was one hardly seen extremely thin thread of plastic fiber that had got in between. I have never tried it on any extremely high leak rate so it might very well happen that it calibrate it self in some way according to any the leak rate and lower the sensitivity perhaps so it wont react the helium in the air or such. The internal leak rate test does not have anything to do with any external ones, that internal is only to confirm that it works as suspected so that is inserted straight into it.
Hi! I do Helium Mass Spectrometer repair and maintenance for a living.
These older Pfeiffer units are somewhat of a collaboration between them and Inficon. The spectrometer tube and calibrated leak are both Inficon models which were licensed to Adixen-Alcatel which would later have their vacuum division purchased by Pfeiffer.
For a hobbyist/home user having an Inficon spec tube is great as you can expect the filaments to last basically forever. They run reasonably high voltages but incredibly tiny amperages compared to every other brand and also have a far larger ion beam of relatively lower strength.
The big failure points on those units are the pumps (those mini rotary vane pumps are awful in general) and the pirani vacuum gauges. You had oil in the valve block because the anti-suckback on the pump failed. This means that if it isn't rebuilt every time you turn the unit off you run a huge risk of pulling oil from the pump to the highest point of vacuum, which is your turbo.
You mention at one point using a silicone tubing. Do not do this. Silicone and helium mass specs do not mix. Silicone is highly permeable to helium and also hangs onto it an releases it as a virtual leak relative to its density. You should always be using Buna-N (80 durometer is recommended) or Viton for seals and Tygon or metal tubing for hoses (hardware store vinyl tubing does work but usually has lots of mold release and outgasses like crazy for the first few hundred hours).
I'd be happy to answer any other questions you have on this. It's always good to see people interested in Helium Mass Spectrometers.
Thank you a lot for all the advice and information! I will check the suck-back valve of the rotary vane pump.
@@AdvancedTinkeringThis comment said what I was suspecting.. that the oil from the roughing pump might have been pulled backwards into the turbo pump when the unit was shut off and allowed to stand with high vacuum in the chamber.. I was unaware of an "anti-suckback valve", so I was going to suggest a procedural solution - "never do that" - have a vacuum relief valve in the experimental apparatus, run this devise for the duration of an experiment cycle, then end the cycle by opening the vacuum relief valve before powering down this unit.
I have two of these pumps and the anti-suckback on these pump are not the best system. Better on little bigger Edwards fex where you can see the valve it self covering the inlet, on the pfeiffer pumps you can not see it since its internal.
Taking something apart and putting it back together so that it works is a right of passage for every engineer
I work in aerospace and it is the best feeling ever when something is will and truly broken and you figure it out before engineering have then fix it
Taking things apart and not being able to put them back together again is why engineers become engineers.
this piece of equipment is awesome!
Videos of this calibre can never be too long! This was a fascinating and nail-biting teardown and repair of a piece of equipment I had no idea even existed. Thank you so much for taking the time to explain so much of what you were doing.
As a lab manager dreading the day I will have to do maintenance on one of our Pfeiffer mass specs, this video is extremely valuable!
Thank you!
i would not want to know how much this thing would have cost, its always a gamble with rarities like this, either you end up needing to save in the 4 figures, or find one floating on a (for youtube to remain unnamed) site for 50€ from someone who has no clue what it is.
ive also never seen such a cute turbomolecular, its a very very compact setup that way.
amazing video as always! I do love learning from reverse engineering high tech stuff, espeically if its still in one piece haha
I hoped to see the pcb and the electronic because I enjoy seeing scientific equipment and measurement circuits. But I am happy for you since dismantiling the control corcuits was not needed. Enjoyed each second of the video, it is great
Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed the video!
You may actually get lucky in the future. According to the error log of the machine the 24V supply for the mass spectrometer is low. It doesn't seem to effect the machine in any way so I decided not to mess with it. But if it fails or some other problems show, I will have to take a look at the electronics.
Your videos are always fascinating. I'm impressed you got that pump stripped down and put back together, that looked seriously fiddly. The part you didn't know the name of is called a cable gland in English. Looking forward to the next video already
Once upon a time I was a young engineer and I specified, installed and qualified a GEA system for two such MS devices.
I‘m pretty sure it was the same manufacturer but the turbo was external and we had it integrated in to the DCS of the plant.
It was very useful for detecting Si-Oil leaks and also gathering data on our products that somehow nobody wanted (if validated: never touch!).
I love this type of kit.
Thank you for sharing and warm regards to Elias 😊
A side note on oil..
I recall walking up to our screw compressors (yes, the Japanese ones by Mycom..) as I had heard a slight howling noise.
Instead of clear oil I found a whitish emulsion in the freaking sight glass.
As we were in the crucial steps during drying I didn’t hit the E-Stop, I notified my boss and asked our vendor if they „had one one stock, we may need a drop-in replacement very soon“.
We ran that compressor for weeks on end, it howled and sung churning „milk“.
I can’t remember what made that oil go white but it was something to do with water.
That‘s perfect when you‘re using oil as a lubricant and a sealant. Great stuff.
We had no deviations, pump-down was completed within the vendors specifications - we then found out, that a stretch of piping was not large enough on the suction side.
We also had the gunk analysed in the pump, until today I wonder where that water came from.
It was literally H2O in oil with minor impurities but not what one would expect from the Ca-laden cooling water used in the jacket of the compressors.
Anyhow - those compressors are expensive but nothing compared with our revenue/batch or a lost day manufacturing. We had two compressors per unit, they were used for the condensor in one circuit and for temperature ctrl of the mantle and shelves in the unit.
If anyone needs a compressor that will compress just about any gas and also tolerate a bit of water of unknown origin, then head over to Mycom.
You‘ll find a video on PascalAIR here, -100C with ambient air as heat transfer medium..
I work with HIVAC systems in the semiconductor industry. We use helium leak detectors all the time. I found this video very interesting as well as your other turbo videos. Great job!!!
Very interesting rebuild, great job!
I have 2 old turbopumps that I scavenged in working condition many years ago, but I have not dared to try to start them before cleaning. We used to rent part of a small clean room in the basement of the then new MC2 center at Chalmers University here in Sweden. The room was used soley for reconditioning their turbopumps and similar stuff. The cleaning and service of these seemed to be a science in itself. They oven baked everything before assembly.
You mentioned silicone tubing, it was tried as a return system to He liquifier in the building but was found to be useless, very permeable for He so it is perhaps not the best choice in Your case. I have a small Edwards He sniffer that has proved very useful. Many polymers leak He as crazy, has been a useful demonstrator for some of my work on toxic chemical transfer systems. It has different applications and for a vaccum systems You need to slightly over pressurize the system with He and look for leaks with the detector. Vaccum seals etc may behave differently under overpressure which can be a problem.
Your unit looks really wonderful, very pretty build! I would nevertheless perhaps consider lifting out the oil pump and place it on the floor, this may reduce future oil ingress to the turbopump. But I guess the vacuum line needs to be fairly short for prompt response of the detector.
Thanks!
What a great win !!! Many thanks for sharing with us.
Impressive repair job! well done.
Thank you!
There are way to view people out there able to repair things. But too many able to throw stuff away for buying new.
Bist n krasser Typ. Respekt. Ich habe extrem viel Spaß an Deinen Videos und habe schon ne Menge durch Dich gelernt. Für mich nahe am modernen Universalgelehrten. :-)
awesome content! glad to gain better understanding of vacuum systems
I'm very jealous of your new toy! Excellent job on the repair, I was on the edge of my seat watching you disassemble and reassemble the turbo. Quality entertainment, haha.
I am impressed! (Even editing a 1 hour long video💀 respect!)
Amazing piece of equipment. Can't wait for your sneak peak project ;)
I'm working is plasma physics field, and my Ph.D. thesis was a new method of using such helium leak detector. Since it just really precise mass-spectrometer for 4 a.m.u. we eventually made it measure, quite precice, the amount of helium atoms (and deuterium molecules) passing throught it. It always strikes me why nobody figured it out before.
Excellent video! I would've cleaned and flushed the rotary vane pump, but if it works fine without, that's also alright.
I use the same Device. Be careful with the Display. Pfeiffer told me there's no more spare part available anymore. In the way it is mounted it by factory it can be damaged easily.
As a Pfeiffer Vacuum Service tech i said "No no no!" quite a few times. :D
Haha, I'm sure you did :D. I hope it wasn't to hard to watch ;)
more or less a scientific thriller, very entertaining. thank you👍👍👍
Thank you! I'm glad you liked the thriller ;)
the turbo molecular pumps are really beautifully machined :)
english word for that @50:00 is "cable gland" which is a cable strain relief device
Man, great video ! I was thrilled the whole time.
Thanks! I'm glad you liked it!
That little screw you had in middle of oil cartridge to help lift it threw me off at first. I never saw that being put back, but it was never there to begin with :)
You're performing CPR on the system. As you found out, and I assume you got the unit for free, it was already dead. You can't 'kill' it anymore. (As one my CPR instructors called it, they're already dead, you can't make them any deader). Had your attempt failed, it would still be fundamentally dead. But now it's alive! Have yourself a frankenstein moment and a beer :) Congrats!
Das nenn ich mal Puzzeln für Fortgeschrittene. Froschlers Ölbanhammer war auch dabei. Great work.
Cool amazing job great work
So glad I found this channel. The name of the channel is so accurate too haha
Haha, thank you! I appreciate it!
There will be a new video today :)
A lapel mic doesn't _need_ to be wireless to work fine; if plugging a wired one into your camera directly doesn't work you can connect it to your phone and record your audio on that and then put it together afterward. Clapping your hands is a good marker to sync the tracks if your software won't do it automatically.
Nice video, I learned a lot👍
4:43 in and I'm thinking someone changed the filter etc and didn't refill the oil, this was followed by someone running it dry...
8:08 oh... it is SO much worse.
49:50 Grommet, gland, wire nut, strain relief; take your pick.
My traditional adjustment for helium flkw is using a blunted hypodermic needle, flow should be just enough to feel on your wetted upper lip. This is plenty for course location. Fine location is adjusted by bubbling in water. BTW, cheap balloon-grade helium is more than good enough!
9:22 It does not really ruin the TMP, unless it happens when it's at full rpm. Otherwise it just results in an annoying and cumbersome cleaning where the bearing also need to be cleaned very good and then re-lubed or re-greased with the right oil or grease.
fantastic work
Thank you!
That part at 50:00 is probably what we would call a 'Gland' in English
The stators are bent that way to act as a spring sort of. Keeps tension.
I suspected something like that. Thank you for the information!
38:30 Oh that one is dry, I would absolutely have put much more turbopump oil on that for sure.
Where can I find the community you asked for help when you took the bearing screw out? I am getting started with UHV equipment and such a community would just be amazing...
Anyways; great video you made! Glad I found your channel!
Thanks! I added the link to the discord server in the description of the video.
This leak detector design is just nuts. Definitely not the german engineering we get used to. The TMP should be always higher than the RVP otherwise this happens. With this layout, under normal operation the RVP slowly fills up the TMP with oil. Without the help of gravity this will happen again. Or try to make a U turn with a longer vacuum hose, where the bottom of the U goes below the inlet level of the TMP.
The oil in the felt came from the RVP of course. I have never seen a Pfeiffer DUO which was not leaky... Repalce it with a Pfeiffer membrane pump, if u have any. A TMP with a drag stage works with a membrane pump as well.
And by the way, replace the rotary vane pump's starting capacitor. In case of failure, this type of starting cap can burst into flames. Trust me, once it almost burned down our lab.
The oil you lube the bearing with DOES absolutely matter. If it has a to high viscosity, as with the rough vacuum pump, the bearing will run warmer and could deteriorate the oil to such level that it will eventually seize. Real turbo oils have a very low viscosity and special additives that rough pump oils normally don't have.
Great video. Immense respect for being to able to basically take that thing apart.
This video shows validates my immense dislike for oil in vacuum systems ;)
Is that leak detector one where you can switch to use hydrogen instead of helium for more economical testing?
That vessel at the end is indeed a beauty. The number of ports on the top and the big window promise a fancy experiment.
Thanks! :) As far as I know you can't use hydrogen.
@@AdvancedTinkering That's too bad. I know that other Pfeiffer ones can do it, so I speculated it might be somewhere in the options, but it's probably not too big of a financial hit on a hobby scale to use helium.
With a more modern HLT 560 system it's possible to switch to leaking with hydrogen. But the sensitivity is way lower.
If it wasn't contaminated, we'd have never seen inside this amazing device...So nothing is inherently "bad".
... just thinking I was rather pleased when I managed to fix my angle grinder. ;)
Just a question... Perhaps resp. for shure that has been talked about somewhere, but I have not found my answer yet.... How is your oilmanagement for the rotary vane pumps which are used as "last" vacuum step? I mean as there every molecule of water comes along there should relatively fast be a saturation of the pump oil with moisture, or not? I am refrigeration technician and have just gotten a new vacuum pump from FieldPiece, where exactly that is the topic. Redundant oil tanks with valves and lids and so on....To keep the oil from saturating with moisture while standing off duty as it gets harder to take away moisture when the difference between the partial pressures of the water gets lower and lower over time...How do you handle that? Just frequently changing oil or do you have an engineered way to go as well as everywhere else? :-)
If I understand correctly you could use this or similar leak detector to provide vacuum to a very small system with no other pumps.
Yes, they can evacuate a smaller chamber themselves.
You're right, moreover the system doesn't have to be very small in fact.
But don't expect achieving really high vacuum levels with this approach, - even though the TMP is present in the system its pumping speed is severely reduced by the valve block cross sections. With really small volumes and long times you could reach some 10^(-5)-10^(-6) mbar, but with larger chambers the feasible limit is set by the rough pump with its ~10^(-3) mbar limit.
Hey,
ich hatte letzte Woche ein ähnliches Problem, eine Pfeiffer Hipace 80 hatte sich nach dem Abschalten einer Testkammer mit dem Öl aus der Vorpumpe vollgesaugt.
Der Rotor ließ sich nur noch ganz zäh drehen. Ich habe dann die Belüftungsschraube entfernt und die Pumpe seitlich gelagert - so konnten ca. 20 -30ml Öl rauslaufen. Dann habe ich mehrfach Bremsenreiniger in die Pumpe gesprüht und dann gleich wieder rauslaufen lassen. Der Rotor lief nun wieder frei. Dann Habe ich den Einlass verschlossen und die Pumpe wieder an die Vorpumpe gehangen und eine Stunde nur die Vorpumpe pumpen lassen. Danach habe ich dann die Turbo zugeschaltet und diese läuft als wäre nichts passiert.
Ursprünglich hatte ich auch vor die Pumpe zu zerlegen und zu reinigen - aber nun geht sie so zurück in den Pumpenstand. Die wird dort dann wieder mehrere Monate durchlaufen.
Awesome video! Cool to see the inside of a turbo molecular pump. Do you think it would be possible to repurpose the pumps to something else or do you think this will be a useful tool to have for future projects?
Thank you! One could probably make a flange that fits to the custom ports on the turbomolecular pump to adapt it to a CF or KF flange. But I definitely want to keep the leak detector. It's a useful piece of equipment and the chances to find another pump that fits the unit are slim to none.
Would it be possible to modify the System into a "normal" mass spectrometer to let's sas connect to a GC system? And from what i saw in the Video the built in MS only features a magnetic sector?
It's a fixed system only tuned to see He3/He4, it doesn't sweep.
If you had a Residual Gas Analyzer(RGA) connected to a normal vacuum system though, you could. They're tiny self-contained mass specs designed for process monitoring, and they usually sweep from 0 to 50, 80, 100, or 300 amu.
49:40 i usually call that a wire grommet
wouldn't scraping the rotor throw the balance out of whack?
I didn't scrape the rotor but the rings holding the stators in place. They don't spin the pump is put back together.
And even if, I don't think the few micrograms of material removed would influence the balance by a noticeable amount.
@@AdvancedTinkering Ahh makes sense
I've tried to repair a similar leak detector a few month ago the electronic part was dead so I recoverd only the two pump and I still have the mass spectrometer part if you are interested I can send it to you 😊
Thank you for the offer! But I don't think a have a use for a mass spectrometer. Nevertheless I appreciate it!
I'm holding my eyes open for a RGA. That would be very cool to have.
@@AdvancedTinkering I'll make you know if I found one in my labs bin's !
By the way your work is really interesting and I would love to work with you on this kind of projects!
Thank you! Sure, if you have an idea for a project let me know :)
@@AdvancedTinkering I'm currently working on a pulse tube refrigerator based on hyperspace pirate design. I'm also trying to make the radiative cooling paint from nighthawkinlight.
A PVD reactor could be an interesting project 🤔
another hint was the color of the hose..
True :D
@@AdvancedTinkering but kudos dude, it takes alot of courage to take a turbo molecular pump apart, re assemble it, and use it.
17:31 Of course they don't because then the customer can fix them and are not forced to buy a new one for a much higher price. You are a very bad customer if you fix the pump.
Im not an engineer, but wouldnt oil in a part that spins fast be neccesary?
Maybe we can make a deal? I'm always missing a few screws when I put things back together >_
I don't get it too, as if a manufacturer would have a disadvantage if publishing schematics, construction drawings or disassembling/maintenance manuals. If manufacturers fear they could just be copied, than I have bad news, the others don't need manuals or schematics to copy stuff. In my opinion having all those documents accessible would be a reason to buy from this and not another manufacturer. Just imagine we would have those fine schematics in the back of our devices like we used to have "just" 50 years ago, if I belief the legends. But at least we're doing some baby steps in the right (to repair) direction lately....
After watching the whole video ;) I take back what I said. Publishing those manuals for a turbo vac would be financial/company suicide. It would animate people to disassemble the turbo vac and no one in their right mind should disassemble such a crazy complicated assembly
Oil has no business being inside system like this. Get a dry forepump! The molecular drag part is in 3 stages.
Many of the rotors are made in ONE PIECE to eliminate contamination getting in between parts. They are first machined from block of aluminum (cylinder with slots) on lathe, followed by EDM fabrication of the blades. That's why the stators are split. In older pumps, the stators were full-round & rotor stages & stators had to be assembled TOGETHER.
53:42 - 'also' wenn se German comes out :D
where you at? Bundesland reicht ja :)
Haha :D it happens from time to time.
Aus Hessen.
The beeping sound should have gone absolutely wild and screaming when you put the helium to it so that part is not correct.
That completely depends on the leak rate. Since the internal test leak checks out, I don't see a reason to suspect anything wrong with it.
@@AdvancedTinkering In this case the leak rate was huge with paper like that. Once I was involved were there was a very small leak in a chamber, hardly noticeable but it had to be taken care of. I used a helium detector and I strongly suspected 2 KF connectors since the rest was CF. When I got close to one of them so did it went from about one beep a sec to absolutely screaming. Opened the connector up and It was one hardly seen extremely thin thread of plastic fiber that had got in between. I have never tried it on any extremely high leak rate so it might very well happen that it calibrate it self in some way according to any the leak rate and lower the sensitivity perhaps so it wont react the helium in the air or such. The internal leak rate test does not have anything to do with any external ones, that internal is only to confirm that it works as suspected so that is inserted straight into it.
das pr0 zeigt gesicht
Life hack; register a company with the state and set it up as your address. Costs 20-100$ and does not require anything special. Pick a company name
Could I get a link to the vacuum Hax0rs discord server, it says it's invalid? I have a recently built vacuum system with a turbo on it.