Sunday, May 3, 2020

mystery flange

I've been disassembling the vacuum chamber system to transport it home more practically. I didn't exactly want to remove the ion gauge, but I was reasonably worried that I would break it if I didn't. After I got home I took a better look at it and saw a mating flange style I wasn't aware of. Several hours worth of google searches didn't reveal anything, and so I still have no idea what kind of flange is on this.





On the gauge is a male-type plug with a small step that has what appears to be a brass-like gasket. It did not easily come off, and I'm not sure I should even try to remove it, therefore I don't know if it has any kind of Conflat style knife edge. On the chamber side is a female socket. It doesn't have a knife edge, but it's possible the the first step is ramped, and it has a pretty sharp edge, but it's hard to tell if that's actually the case. 

Anybody know what kind of flange this is?

2 comments:

  1. You might find something about it in here https://www.parker.com/Literature/Seal%20Group/CSS%205129.pdf. Beats me as to what exact flange it is but it is definitively using some kind of metal to metal seal. These are fairly common in vaccuum systems but there's alot of different kinds and their use is highly varied on the application.

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  2. Thanks for the link, diereses. There's a lot of interesting seal designs in the catalog. A day or so after writing this post, I began to suspect that the gasket perhaps wasn't brass, but actually gold, which isn't too uncommon, but they're generally a wire ring. I think what I'll end up doing is just try to see if I can just get it to reseal without replacing anything. If not then I might cut off the gauge, and try to put an NPT thread on the metal stub. Then perhaps I'll just epoxy these weird flanges together. Of course, that'll make them more or less permanently attached. For now I'll just hope that They'll reseal and that there's sufficient life left in the ion gauge.

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