Advanced Tinkering - 2023-11-19
In today's video, I'll be evacuating my vacuum chamber using my massive Pfeiffer TPH2101. The TPH2101 is a turbomolecular pump with a pumping speed of 1400 L/s. To do this, I had to fabricate a reducing flange first. The pumping speed is simply impressive. Wissel Vakuum: https://wissel-vakuum.de/ Join my Patreon and support my projects! Your contribution means the world to me and helps bring my ideas to life. I truly appreciate your support! https://www.patreon.com/AdvancedTinkering
Lets appreciate that engineering by Pfeiffer Vaccum for a second. These turbomolecular pumps had a long productive live, are full of residue and wear&tear, have been decomissioned (probably because of that), not serviced in over a decade, dis- and reassembled by a (knowledgable) amateur.... and STILL run that well. That's how amazingly well the people at Pfeiffer designed and built them. I'm awestruck by that quality.
Nice to see in a world of planned obsolescence trash.
So much stuff like this gets such little use by universities and such and then just gets replaced because thats the name of the game. Gotta spend it all. Pokémon Labs. A subsidiary of government grant grinders in partnership with University La Ductrine; specializing in varying degrees and angles of sadist action. A fine faction to be part of.
Speaking of none sense and waste …..
When My older brother was at one of the top dental schools in the United States Inc. they were learning to work with gold and do crowns and castings and such. …,, well apparently the whole lot of them lack any sort of frugality/common sense/or that ability to always see opportunity.
I say this in relation to the fact that if it was for one person, my brothers friend; all the dimwits gold would have just been thrown in the garbage ….yeah. Soo when you work with the gold you end up with “flashing” and such. Excess gold. Well apparently they were taught this was garbage i guess? Since they were all just throwing it in then garbage with the used plaster molds and whatever. ……(i wonder how many throw away all the gold crowns they remove from people? Im guessing many do. Clueless people dentists and doctors. No business sense) ..
So his friend collected all the gold whenever an opportunity came up and for fun he made himself and entire gold “grille” for his upper and lower teeth.
Guess how much gold he got out of the trash?? Well over 10k.
And get this …
My mind instantly is running and im like uummmm sooo like is this the norm around there? Ever quarter (or semester? Whatever they’re on ) for everyone to toss their gold in the garbage. ??
“Yeah….”
😵💫
I tried to figure out how i was going to insert myself into doing free janitorial work but my brother didnt see too interested.
He was focused on worthless school.
He graduated number 1. 4.00 gpa. Every quarter.
Guess it worked out for him. He just is finishing a 8 million dollar new house in idaho. ………( its really cool …..it has solid copper gutters. ….:. Annnd it also doesnt even have a den. Or office in it for him…… did i mention his wife?? Did i mention his office isnt in idaho? Did i mention he flys home every week and sleeps in his office on a cot??……. Hmmm. His wife just had ….nevermind.
Last thing. When i met his wife before they were engaged.
Back when my brother and i were living together in the ghetto in chula vista California doing door to door sales she came down to visit ….
Thats when i learned something very unique about her….
She …..
Didnt……Know how….
To jump……
Yes. Jump. It sounds like bs. And a lie.
Nope. It was real. She thought you jumped using only your feet. Like flipper on a pinball machine launching you off the ground with hard flick of the heel toe ankle action.
Logically she saw this as the reason basketball players could jump so high. Big feet. Duh.
So rather than pointing this out to others like myself as amusement as my brother had just done i taught he how to jump….
Seriously. 🥴
And when she did achieve that first flight …soaring a quarter inch into the air..when she touched down …🎉she went ballistic.
Thats when my brother apparently knew she was the one i guess because a week later we were driving back to Seattle…….
And that was the last time my brother and i got to hangout. I had just moved down a month or two before.
Anyways he went one way and i went the polar opposite ..
I better stop. Ok bye.
Glad i got that therapy session
Thanks for listening
Ps your right about Pfieffer, really awesome precision quality creations.
And anything that is able to be serviced these days and kept alive is so important.
I have a love for vintage. Antique items of all kinds. They’re so high quality. The stuff from before ww2. Especially from the 1920’s or older.
The technology is pretty incredible. Stuff that far surpasses present day.
All sorts of electronics that utilize mercury and vacuum tubes that few even comprehend anymore.
Theres all sorts of stuff that would be claimed pseudo science by the closed mind dead clueless modern man.
If anyone is interested i can show you the newspaper articles from when a funny thing happened 100 years ago.. all this stuff cern is supposedly just learning like the”god particle” and the rest of it….
Literally , i kid you not, all discovered and more 100years ago. ….its like history is on repeat or something.
And i mean it please ask if interested. Its important to be aware of our true history as much as we can.
Buy some old issue of Science and Invention. Its really awesome.
I have one right here from 1921 and it goes into detail talking about human cloning and using cows as surrogates for carrying whatever animals or human they are cloning. Cover story is bout Dicyanin lenses and how theyre used in astro spectrography as well as for giving people the ability to see the human aura.
Turns out pre ww2 this was common knowledge. Dozen books written on it as well the many other types of dye discovered that allowed for sensitizing the human eyes to even more wavelengths. For instance layering with a carmine filter/lens would allow one to see another layer of the auric field i believe?
Whats insane is if you do search about this youll get sites like snopes “debunking” it and saying its” pseudo science “. Debunking and pseudo science… two weaponized tools of ignorance.
By the way i own three different sets of Dicyanin goggles and theyre truly amazing.
They forced me …quite literally …
To see the world in a different way. (I used to think auras were bs. So far from it and i was happy to learn this too. The world is a lot more interesting than i once believed….
In fact the world as we’ve known it is about to change. …ill leave it at that. )
The scary sounds are normal with mag lev bearing pumps. It is due to the pump passing through mechanical resonance bands as the pump controller tries to actively cancel destructive resonances in the lower audio range. ❤
Aha, so that is the reason they have a cost a of a small countrys GDP.
It's important to go under or over the resonance bands...
PLEASE add a screen in front of the turbine... you don't want to ever know the horror of something flaking or popping off in the chamber, and going though the vanes..... Nobody should have to have that happen.
Hats off to your welding, and the help you got from Mr. Vacuum! Nice job there !
My guy, those welds are impressive!. seriously, most people wouldn't even be able to run a TIG without going through a whole box of tungsten tips first try. meanwhile you're over here stacking dimes.
Also, ramp up vibrations are spooky. I used to have to use a large bench grinder at work, had a 10 inch aluminum oxide wheel on that thing. When you turn it on, the thing near shakes every bolt out between 40 and 60% speed but runs smooth as butter otherwise.
Thank you a lot! But to be fair, the pulse mode of the welder makes a huge different. Without it my welds did look worse.
@@AdvancedTinkering That's fair, but still you need a steady hand to tig weld even with that.
Wow, huge props to Wissel Vakuum for supporting you with that adapter. That big a stainless steel flange has to be crazy-expensive, so it’s a lot of dollar/euro value, plus the owner himself helped you make it. It’s great PR for him, but he’s also very generous, much respect!
Vacuum flange adapters that size are *expensive*. You got a bargain, sir! This is a brave hobby for the financially constrained.
During my time as an Instrument Systems Specialist I calibrated instruments on an electron beam welding system and the chamber was big enough to fit a full size 3/4 ton utility van. It used two large turbomolecular pumps along with a pair of even bigger roughing pumps to evacuate the chamber and took well over an hour to get to the lowest possible pressure. I love science, thanks for another fun video.
I love your set-up 😍 but you definitely should add a grid before the pump to avoid any damages on the blades if something fly in
Servus, ich war mal Techniker bei Pfeiffer Vacuum und habe die TPH 2101 repariert und gewartet. Die Vibrationen bei ca. 10% oder auch zwischen 50-60 Hz sind normal. Das sind Resonanzen, die vom Magnetlager der Pumpe kommen und sind in jeder TMP vorhanden. Auch in den neuen Versionen. Man kann sie aber mittlerweile gut Wegwuchten.
Zusätzlich kann es sein, dass dein Aufbau (der nicht sonderlich stabil aussieht) mit der Magnetlagerresonaz zusammen sich hochschaukelt. Bei Fragen zur Wartung oder anderen Dingen gerne melden. Ich kenne die Dinger In- und Auswendig.
Hi!
Vielen Dank für den Kommentar und die Info zu den Vibrationen! Das ist schonmal beruhigend zu wissen. Ja, der Stand ist eigentlich viel zu flexibel für die Kammer und die Pumpe zusammen. Ich hoffe irgendwann ein neues Gerüst aus Stahl bauen zu können und im Boden verankern zu können.
Wenn du die Zeit hast und es dich interessiert, würde ich mich sehr freuen, wenn du dir das Video anschaust, in dem ich eine der Pumpen zerlegt habe (zwei Videos vor diesem). Als Pfeiffer Techniker bekommt man sicher Schnappatmung wenn man mir dabei zusehen muss, aber mich würde sehr interessieren, an welchen Stellen ich ganz groben Mist gebaut habe und wie es richtig wäre. Und ob meine Theorie dazu, wie das "Ölsystem" funktioniert, richtig ist. Und welchen Zweck der O-Ring am Zentierring der Statoren erfüllt.
I have a small TMP that is sketchy to use. A blade broke off it at work, so they threw it away by letting me take it home. Fortunatley, it was an ebay special because we were not treating it well (the reason the pump didn't tear itself apart was because we were evacuating a sticky process, and the side wall was so sticky that the blade stuck to the wall instead of falling into the rest of the blades).
I fixed most of the balance problems by cutting out completely the missing blade as well as the blade on the opposite side, but even though it is only a ISO-100 pump the startup is still loud enough that hearing protection is needed until it gets up to speed.
What I need to do is build up an air bearing type thing so I can properly balance it.
Very nice video!
Resonances and vibrations of TMPs always sound really scary to be next to.
But they can be beasts. We have a dozen or so pumps of similar size running in our labs that are close to 50000 hours operation without a single one showing issues or failing.
If you have the adapters for it, hooking up the small Turbovac50 as backing for the TPH2101 might be interesting to see if you can down even further.
Absolutely! During those resonances, my heart rate definitely went up.
It's fascinating how long these machines can run without any issues.
Actually, I have the necessary adapters to connect the Turbovac50 as backing for the TPH2101. That sounds like a fantastic idea! ;)
@@AdvancedTinkering Another comment to the spikes in the pressure readout: the gauges sometimes switch between emission currents (if they have a filament) or readout full scales when they get to lower pressures, which can cause jumps like that.
Yes, as the pressure gets lower most controllers will step down the filament current. On glass gauges you could see the change in brightness, where I work we got rid of our last system with a clear glass gauges several years ago, now everything is a black box connected to a computer...
@@AdvancedTinkering I wouldn't recommend it. The load on the 50 could be so high that it overheat, of if a slight puff of air is compressed by the big on the output from it can be so high that the small one can be totally destroyed. And you won't get any lower anyway since you are way past the vacuum regime of that to work, that only work at rough vacuum.
I was standing right next to a Leybold D2500 TMP, about 15 hp, when it went from 39000 to 0 rpm in about 1/2 second. I'll never forget that sound. One blade tip rubbed and welded to the housing, broke off and wiped the rest of the blades out. We also had an uncontained burst with an experimental Becker pump, it was like a bomb went off. We use those on fast axial CO2 lasers. Every pump we used ran through a few harmonic areas on spool up.
Holy shit!
We had that happen to a jet engine! The N1 and N2 shafts were out of alignment and able to rub and weld. The pilot had to change his pants when it went from 105% RPM to 0% in about half a second! Didn't frag the engine though.
in our mass spectrometer we had 4 turbopumps and two rotary vane pumps resulting in a ion trap pressure of 1.4*10E-9 mbar
I have a couple of different medium-sized turbos, and they both have a very distinctive spin-up sound before they go quiet, right in the initial stage of startup. It's a little scary since it sounds like it isn't balanced for a moment, but it quickly accelerates past that point. You have such an amazing setup, having so many generous donors and friends who will help out sure is nice.
If you'll be moving around anything with more mass it's probably worth the cost to get a lift of some sort. I use an engine hoist to move around machine tools and it folds up into a small size when not in use.
I used to work on large vacuum systems, the scariest noise after a strip down was a nut or bolt loose in the chamber just before the TMP came apart. It did happen even though we used to treat the system like surgeons and check everything we had used to make sure nothing was left in the patient!
I'm sure surgeons do the same thing lol
We recently bought a used GC-MS. When we started to pump down, the noise was similar. Not so happy faces. Turns out the seller's technician forgot to plug a blind into the purge port of the turbomolecular pump. It happily drew vane pump oil into the whole system.
I was so happy it came with a 3 months warranty. Now it is running nicely.
You can traverse the vibration regions, whatever the reason for them, more quickly by having the pump under less load as it's spinning up--you could use the turbovac50 to bring the chamber below 1e-2 mbar and then start the tph2101. Also the pressure in your chamber seems a bit high--you might consider just pumping on it for a few days to see if that boils off whatever's causing the problem. Vacuum chambers that have been worked on and not pumped in a while often have anomalously high loads of miscellaneous outgassing.
Alternately, there might be a leak, of course, but you're well equipped to find and fix that. If it's such a large leak as to bring the chamber to a few e-6 mbar under that big pump, it's admitting air at ~1e-3 mbar L/s so helium will penetrate at ~1e-2 mbar L/s, so if you use the helium leak detector on it bear in mind what a full scale detection looks like. One more coarse-grained trick for such large leaks is to just spray any gas other than air--it will read differently on the ion gauge, so you will see a jump in the signal if you put eg argon or helium or even to some extent nitrogen near the outside of the leak.
Congratulations! It was really cool of Mr Vacuum to let you do that.
10% load means ~3000 RPM, which equals to around 50 Hz. This frequency is the same as the grid frequency you supply your power with.
maybe this is the reason for the resonance of the motor at around 10% load.
As you mentioned already in the video, it must be an electrical resonance, because after power off, the resonance disappears. So a purely mechanical resonance is not an option.
is there a way to look at the voltages of the motor / the input power to see some sort of phase alignment?
Maybe the controller has some old caps that are not up to the task, and some extra ripple is passing thru.
Mechanical resonance is still possible an issue. If you turn it off the rpm starts changing and changing rpm will cancel out vibration.
but highly unlikely. The change in RPM is very slow because of the low friction of the rotor. When he turns the power of the motor off, the vibrations instantly stop, the rotor spins on freely with roughly the same RPM@@SaviorTheBurn
@@matze1508 I doubt a vacuum makes it low friction. Im sure pieces are pulling together tightly.
the rolling friction in the bearings doenst increase that much while under vacuum. @@SaviorTheBurn
I have the same turbo pumps on my vacuum system and they make the same noises. I think 10% is where it lifts off the physical bearing. If coatings build up on the blades it will get even worse. I noticed your first pump had some coatings on the blades. I have disassembled and reassembled my pumps several times.
I work with these pumps in a CR doing r&d in semiconductor technology.
It's awesome you have these beast. But may I ask... what the hell are you doing at home with these?! :D
Aaaaand now I have to go and watch video of sevicing the turbomolecular pump. That's yet another knowledge that I will never need in my life :-D
You never know when being able to disassemble a turbomolecular pump might save your life ;)
imagine doing Schlenk chemistry with this beast
Yes, in my opinion Schlenk line would implode… as we talked lastly in comments - we can now try who was right ;)
@@mgrzegthe most force a vacuum can put on anything is 1 bar, changing a bit depending on the weather
Extreme overkill unless you were building large arrays of stuff that off gassed a lot.❤
I have worked with these exact pumps, and yes, the vibration at low rpm is normal, just need to be clamped securely. Not sure what you meant by connecting the two turbos together to the big pump, but to make sure, you should never connect a turbo to a turbo, the pressure on the exhaust should not be less then 10e-3mbar, for only one simple reason, the oil will boil, leading to problems with bearings. The difference in base pressure is not so important, the turbovac 50 can get in 10e-9mbar region without problems, but the big one cant. The major use of such big pumps is fighting with high gas loads, for evaporation, sputtering etc... Keep up with turbo madness, this is just wonderful to see...
Thank you for that information! That's good to know.
Mh... that's unfortunate. I wanted to test what happens if I cascade the turbomolecular pumps. Considering the very low vapor pressure of the oil I would not have thought that a significant amount will vaporize.
Yes, the size of the pump has nothing to do with the reached pressure (as long as there is no leak). The only value important for that should be the compression ratio as far as I know.
I'm glad you liked the video! :)
You absolutely can stack TMPs (and in fact there are scientific apparatus that utilise such "compression turbos"). In principle you will shorten pump life on hybrid pumps, but in practise I've seen 10+ years of operation in this configuration. If you use full maglevs, I've seen 15 plus years of service.
These cascaded TMP systems are done to get sufficient compression ratios for hydrogen and helium for solenoidal ion sources and atom beam microscopes.
For some more context, these are systems that run in the 10^-10, 10^-11, and even 10^-12 mbar range.
@@mattgbarr Stacking oil lubricated TMPs is a big no-no, unless you have money, then its ok :) Of course maglev pumps can be stacked, but then again, thats for specific needs, and given the fact how much maglev pumps cost... I wouldnt do it anyway. For systems that require pressures lower then 10e-9, other types of pumps are used... Devil is in the details., money is also a big problem...
Well, of course you always have NEGs and TSPs and ion pumps. None of which serve you anything worthwhile whilst working with helium.
It's pretty much stacked TMPs or bust. Whilst a no-no in principle, it's extremely common to do so and can give you a very long service life if you use good quality units.
My Balzer vacuum evaporator used a Pfeiffer turbomolecular pump. I had to replace the pump at one time and since I lived and worked within 10 miles of the Pfeiffer factory near Wetzlar I got a tour of the factory, as well as a new pump. Compared to oil-diffusion or ion-getter pumps they are certainly simple and reliable. One of our electron microscopes also had a TM pump. I was a bit leery about vibration, but it was not a problem. You probably will want to put a screen in front of that pump.
I've never felt particularly anxious bringing up my turbo, but watching this I was stacking sandbags in front of my monitor 😂
My understanding is that it's normal for turbo pumps to accelerate through a resonance band during spin-up, I know that mine does. Some fancy pump controllers make an effort to brake through this band on shut-down to minimize the time spent at resonance and avoid wear. I also believe Edwards talks about this in the manual for my pump in the section about venting during shut-down to brake the pump more quickly.
Take that with a grain of salt, of course, I'm strictly a hobbyist.
Awesome video once again, cheers,
Thanks! Yes, I think you can see that I was pretty nervous 😅
Thanks for the information.
Looking forward to a new video from you!
Very nicely done, really enjoyed the spin up footage I’m stoked that you even got the internal footage lol cuz getting to see and hear the resonation was really cool, glad ya did that!
I suggest the vibrations are the resonance frequency of your adapter.
I would make some vertical WEBS to seam weld onto both of the flanges and onto the adapter tube.
1 web between each clamp.
It's possible that this stiffening might simply alter the resonance frequency and move it up quite a lot.
So it may then need more webs or else a new set of webs centrally mounted horizontally between the vertical webs.
First thing to try might be a few extra clamps?
That spin up began like the machine in the movie Contact.. I think your outro assessment is correct. Let the fun begin!
Pushing past the critical speed is nerve wracking for sure. Possibly while moving the initial bit of air molecules may cause inter-stage surging… try using an ammmeter on the pump to watch how much work it does. Also, if you don’t torque the clamps evenly, you could warp the bell housing on the pump. Might be the source of the vibrations…
I tried my best to tighten the screws evenly. But thank you for the advice! However, I don't believe that was the reason for the vibrations. They should be continuous if that were the case, not suddenly stopping. Also, when the pump is turned off and slows down, the vibrations don't occur at 10% speed (only at 50%, which leads me to believe that range is resonance). So, it must be related to the electronics.
@@AdvancedTinkering maybe it's a resonance between the motor coils and the esc electronics. Sort of like engine knock, as in there's a certain speed where it's not timing the phase change correctly to the coil current, and there's some sort of flyback?
@@AdvancedTinkering If you let it ramp up while the chamber is at high vacuum I suspect that you might not get any vibration, since I am guessing that it is occurring at the point where the motor is having to put in the most torque. It's still a little concerning when you first hear it since failures in the motor could cause it to push the rotor into the crash bearings, which could possible sound like that at low speeds. I wonder if it could be good practice to start a questionable pump under a high vacuum so you can know immediately if you hear any vibrations that it is likely a problem.
In industrial equipment SEMs and similar (not things made in the university physics lab) the turbo pump current was our main parameter the vac control system uses to generate faults. RPM and to a lesser extent vacuum rate also played a role but you capture some aspect of those in the turbo pump current draw.
1:28
That 4 jaw chuck and it’s key are worth the price of admission.
It exudes confidence and strength.
Great video. Thanks
Love this video and all the comments! I will be needing a similar set-up for MBE experiments.
Well done on the welding! I can weld with sticks but have never tried TIG. Very nice of the company to allow in their workshop.
Thank you! The pulse setting makes it easier.
Yes, definitely very nice of them!
The vacuum created is awesome, by definition of the word awesome. The welds are way better than I have ever been able to do and before multiple sclerosis took over my nervous system I had been an auto mechanic welding professionally.
This is some of the coolest content on youtube, love it man!
Thank you!
The folks over at r/welding would give you A+
This is equally fascinating and terrifying.
Your artifact at the 10-6 region can be 1-pinholes in welds (virtual leaks) 2- compounds boiling off and burping (fingerprints , vacuum grease etc) 3-actual very small leaks 4- permeation through o-rings or pin holes.
Looks like you got yourself a turbo-spectacular machine :)
Subscribed. As a Graduate Engineer I spent 2 years in a Semiconductor factory process line working around various vacumn pumps, implanters etc
"No prior experience welding"
Proceeds to absolutely stack dimes like he's been welding custom exhaust systems right out of the womb.
Haha, to be honest, the pulse setting on the welder makes it much easier.
Amazing machine!
It really is!
But also intimidating!
Wow! You are a natural at welding😮
very nice pump👍
I completely agree with others about your welds. A nice bead. Not overly hot. You could have easily warped the flange or cracked the weld on the opposite side. I’ve seen seasoned welders destroy 316. Pulse mode or not. Excellent.
The scary noise coming out from the TMP is due to the mecanical forces induced in the rotor by the stator. Is like when you hear a big generator starting, the electromagnetic field of the inductors make shake everything. So when the motor does all the hard work of acceleration you get all those noises and vibrations, and as soon you start getting closer to the desired spining regime the motor only have apply force to keep the movement. at the desired conditions.
Excellent video! The harmonic and resonant vibrations which occur at those speeds are very hard to understand. Your pumps sound pretty good to me!
This makes me think of my best friend who worked with vacuum equipment and other lab kit for his career. He passed at 48 years old this year unexpectedly.
Now I'm no weldician but for a first weld that looked noice
Well done! A lot of fun to watch. Thanks for sharing. And i foresee a rotary tig welder setup in your future : D
That's a heck of a machine.
@SupremeRuleroftheWorld - 2023-11-19
props to the owner of mr vacuum for allowing you to do that.
@AdvancedTinkering - 2023-11-19
Yes, definitely!
@boris4640 - 2023-11-20
😂
@ian5395 - 2023-11-22
For real. Coolest thing I've ever seen.
@dtiydr - 2023-12-03
Allowing? The correct sentence would more be; "props to the owner of mr vacuum for giving you the pump and controller to play with".
@huben_1337 - 2023-12-11
@@dtiydrbro ur not smart