The VES-210 was recently delivered to ThermoFisher Scientific, a world-class scientific & industrial analytical instrumentation company. It will be used for production in their state-of-the-art X-ray collection techniques facility. Thermo Fisher Scientific X-ray Fluorescence and X-ray Diffraction products provide elemental composition and structural information from a variety of materials. Such systems are typically used in cement and metallurgy industries, among others.

The VES-210 consists of 2x 10 vacuum evacuation and gas backfill ports; 10 in each heated zone. The ports can be batch pumped - so either 10 or 20 ports can be pumped simultaneously - yet can be isolated individually by toggle valves. High vacuum is achieved by a turbo-molecular pump; slightly over-sized to allow for possible future modifications to the system. The vacuum cycle is fully automated via a miniature Siemens PLC controller. High vacuum and gas hardware is of stainless steel throughout. Except for the seals of two high vacuum valves and two high precision micrometer gas valves, all high vacuum gaskets are of oxygen-free high-conductivity copper. The system was fully engineered and built locally to CE norms.

To compensate for barometric pressure variances we used one of the world’s most precise absolute pressure sensors. The sensors for rough and high vacuum are an X-TRONIX broad-range Bayard-Alpert with thoria-coated iridium filament and two thermocouple heads. Rough and high vacuum hardware are mostly right out of our 90-page vacuum components catalog, with some minor custom modifications to T-pieces. The turbo is from Oerlikon (Leybold), the mechanical pump from Adixen (Alcatel) and the high vacuum pneumatic valves from VAT.