Originally posted by Contouraholic:
This is what we use at Carrier for LARGE machinery:


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Robinaire makes lighter duty vac. Pumps and those are used more by automotive and residential repair people.





Torr! Torr! Torr!? or Tora! Tora! Tora!?

Where I worked, we had high vacuum deposition systems and used high vacuum pumps like this one to test the chamber plumbing for leaks. It was neat to connect one of these to a glass bell jar with a little dish of H2O in it and watch the water start to boil, at room temp, as the vacuum approached pressures of only a few microns (0.001 mm).

Water vapor is one of the toughest things to pump and on humid days, pump-down times lengthened significantly when working in uncontrolled, high humidity areas.

If you can get your hands on an old, working refrigerator compressor (watch out, some really, really old systems used Ammonia or SO2 for the refrigerant gas), you can use it as a A/C vacuum pump as long as you squirt a little refrigerant oil into it from time to time (use PAG oil for R-134a systems). They'll pull enough vacuum to dry the system out.

Last edited by KurtD; 06/28/03 09:03 PM.
'95 Contour SE, MTX, Champagne '03 EB Expedition, Med Wedgewood Blue