Stainless Steel Vacuum Chambers

Vacuum ChambersTechnical Notes & Resources
Chamber Terms:
+ Geometries & Characteristics Materials Water Cooling Liners
Geometries & Characteristics
Vacuum chambers are built in a huge variety of shapes and sizes, limited only by application, imagination, and engineering consideration. Chambers range in volume from less than 1 cc to the “world’s largest vacuum chamber” at NASA Plumbrook, USA which is 100 ft diameter by 122 ft tall (~3.5 x 1010 cc).

The more ‘standard’ vacuum chamber shapes include: box, sphere, cylinder, D-shape, and bell jar. Additional components, used in vacuum chamber construction, include: endplates, feedthrough collars, and service wells. All are separately discussed to illustrates the strengths of the basic shapes/designs.

Box Chamber
The box shape chamber is available in two basic forms. One, sealed with metal wire and flat copper gaskets and often called a rectangular chamber, is designed for UHV applications. The other, called a box chamber, has one complete side hinged as an o-ring sealed door and operates at high vacuum. Since both versions are flat-sided, either thick walls or extensive bracing is used to withstand atmospheric pressure.

The box chamber’s door provides easy, fast access to any part of the internal volume. It is the platform of – choice for any repetitive batch process such as: coating multiple substrates; product degassing; evacuation before impregnation, etc. However, its accessibility also makes it an excellent chamber for research applications where, for example, deposition sources, coating materials, and deposition geometry are frequently changed.