Cryopump and vacuum chamber update

A quick video on my new cryopump and the progress I've made on a new vacuum chamber.

Transcription:
Hi guys. In this video I'm going to show you my new cryopump and a sneak peak of the vacuum chamber I'm building.

But first, here's a basic explanation. A cryopump is a type of high vacuum pump that works by getting so cold that almost all the gasses in the chamber condense.

This happens on the cooling arrays, the black pieces you see on top.
I've measured the temperature on mine to be as low as 17 Kelvin, that's -429 degrees fahrenheit!

The pump gets this cold by compressing and expanding helium. The machine you see here is the compressor.

This next clip shows bringing the chamber from high vacuum to atmospheric pressure.

As the humid air runs past the extremely cold parts, the water vapor condenses, making a cloud inside of the bell jar.

Here I am lifting up the base plate and disconnecting wires from the thermocouple to get a better view inside of the cryopump. The coldest parts here are well below the temperature of liquid nitrogen. In the future I plan on building a system to generate liquid nitrogen using the cryopump.

I thought it would be neat to see how quickly water froze.

Here's the new vacuum chamber. It's almost finished, but I need to add in some additional controls and plumbing. I also took some footage of each of the parts I machined for it.

This is the adapter for the cryo pump to the valve assembly. It started as a 1 foot by 1 foot plate of aluminum. We milled the outer diameter and then turned the inner diameter on a lathe. This is where the adapter fits on the chamber.

Next up is the baseplate for the chamber. We started by mounting a 15 inch by 15 inch piece of aluminum stock onto a CNC mill cutting threads for it. Next we cut the main pass through, and then the auxillary feedthrough.

Thank you to everyone who helped me with machining.

The rest of the video is just some additional footage of the cryompump. Thanks for watching!