Using Your Help to Make Better A Oil Diffusion Pump

[@gordoncouger9648]

We learn from mistakes, not watching someone do it right. Fifty-five microns with thrift store stainless steel, mail order silver solder, and Harbor Freight vacuum pump ain't too shabby by any standards. I like watching someone on KZbin who isn't afraid to get grease on their hands. All these videos made by folks with soft hands and clean, manicured nails make me wonder where they learned to work.

[@Kaos2244220011]

Hell yeah, you're being too hard on yourself my guy, when you manage your expectations, you'll manage to have more fun too!

[@TheRageface13]

Don't be so hard on yourself my dude. You managed to make something workable from goodwill cups! That's a fucking achievement in itself!

[@HomeDistiller]

I changed the oil in my cheap roughing pump (it was literally the cheapest dual stage but high capacity pump I could find on eBay) to a good brand oil and it improved it's pumping A LOT, well worth the small outlay, plus stripping the pump and making sure it's all fitted correctly and clean helped too.. But not as much as the good oil. Plus your gauge will be right at it's lower limit and starting to miss read, ie you could be much lower than your gauge is saying.

[@peterspencer6442]

Great advice! I also find that running air through the backing pump for 5-10 minutes every now and again, or after an oil change, also helps flush out the oil; I think even cheap pumps have a special "gas ballast" valve on them to help do this.

[@1islam1]

@@peterspencer6442 ⚠️ God has said in the Quran: 🔴 { O mankind, worship your Lord, who created you and those before you, that you may become righteous - ( 2:21 )} 📖Quran

[@FourthWayRanch]

running a pump without a good trap can ruin it in a day

[@nobodynoone2500]

The fails are as educational as anything else. Don't burn out, burn one down.

[@robwgeorge]

That's the new merch text..."Fucking up and learning!"

[@H34...]

Not about perfectly fleshed out beautiful projects? Thats a functional and respectable vacuum pump made in a garage out of junk from an op shop, pretty fuckin beautiful mate.

[@samykamkar]

#teamcranktown

[@grantd8629]

Amazing video yet again :) and here I am again to make a lengthy list of suggestions, mostly corrections to the first advice I gave lmao 1. Helium trick works way better with a much more accurate gauge and at lower pressures than your current gauge can read, my bad :/ 2. Viton is much better than silicone BUT not flat gaskets, o-rings are much more preferable since they have minimal contact and don’t trap gases as easily 3. Cycle purging, or pre purging your chamber, don’t know why I didn’t think of that one earlier *facepalm* but anyways use a dry gas of any kind to help remove volatiles and water vapor 4. On the note of water vapor, it’s the high/ultrahigh vacuum’s biggest nemesis since it likes to “cling” to stuff, having a way to bake out your system would be beneficial, in true cranktowncity fashion you could probably manage this just by taking a blowtorch to it as long as you don’t get the gaskets too hot lmao 5. And of course what you mentioned and I somehow completely missed earlier, the roughing pump, that definitely would’ve been the biggest improvement and probably the easiest one since 2 stage pumps and decent pump oil are pretty cheap *facepalm x2* Anyways love your content man keep it up :D

[@cranktowncity]

Hell yeah man, thanks for all the advice. I still got my eyes on your channel waiting for that sputtering machine (If you ever get time off work haha)

[@btkjay9598]

Something i havent totally understand is how improving the roughing pump would help to to achive higher vacuum unleast you are talking about shortening the time to achive uhv since the diffusion pump is suppose to be the main pump that bring the chamber to uhv after the roughing pump is already ineffective

[@thomasspielauer2915]

@@btkjay9598 Even though the main pump is achieving the UHV there is always some leakage back through the pump (they only are capable of building up a pressure gradient even if not in laminar flow region). This leakage is significantly lower when reducing the pressure at the backing pump (and also pump speed is increased massively of course). By the way viton gaskets: Beware that they get brittle after being hot or very cold (when using them on top of commercial ODPs they're usually single use only). Baking chambers usually works for UHV systems up to around at most 200 Celsius especially when having some windows in there. This won't remove any hydrocarbons thus the best way when one wants to achieve very low vacuum is cleaning first everything that's visible, then cleaning in some soapy sollution, then doing a ultrasonic bath in distilled / deionized water - after that rinsing with distilled / deionized water again and then dryblowing using nitrogen or argon (never evaporating since that will leave residue). From that moment on only handling with clean gloves - then heating up somewhat above 100 Celsius for a few hours while running the vacuum pump will work (we reach around 10^-12 mbar with that approach by bringing down the chamber first using a membrane+turbopump, then shutting off and using ion getter pumps & in the beginning also titanium sublimation pumps). When one gets in some hydrocarbons one usually has to clean again from scratch (or heat above 400 celsius which is what some manufacturers do before delivery of the parts but that's usually not possible inside of an experiment), when getting in silicone oil or nastier stuff one has to clean in the ultrasonic bath for sure ... have seen Vacuum chambers where baking has not been done using external heating bands but using halogene lamps inside the chamber, that also worked pretty well (Water vapor should be gone very fast - the next problem that one can counter using baking and that takes way more time is then diffusion of Hydrogen out of the stainless steel surfaces of a typical vacuum chamber. This takes ages especially since pumping Hydrogen is harder than pumping other gasses (which is also the cause why one usually sometimes uses periodically gas balast on the backing pump to reduce hydrogen accumulation in between the backing and main pump to reduce diffusion - but all of that stuff only gets interesting when reaching lower pressure regions for sure - would not care while being above the 10^-7 mbar range / reaching the 10^-8 mbar except for the water vapor that gets interesting at around roughly 10^-4 mbar for sure ...)

[@klausbrinck2137]

A better roughing pump yould suck too much of the working-oil-steam. Additional cooled buffles would be needed on the upwards section of the tube, that connects the 2 pumps (or you end up with to little working-oil). Those buffles would re-turn the working-oil-stream back (to where it should stay), but also pushing the gases (that you actually wanted to evacuate) back into the difffusion-pump too, so, an unwanted effect. There´s a point of diminishing returns in this whole scenario, as you can guess. What do people do in industrial installations? Do they use the best roughing-pumps available? OR are there other aspects, that promise more success for now? (for example, an even better working oil, while avoiding welding altogether). A young YTer from Europe mentioned an oil-trader from Germany (just 60€ for 250ml), and the "AppliedScience"-guy noticed, that he used too low-grade flexible tubes for the project´s demands (air would diffuse through the hose-walls)... 33µPa is extremely good, even if 20 is even better, but who REALLY needs such a low vacuum after all ? (let alone 0,1µPa... ;-)

[@Nobody-Nowhere]

helium out, and no helium voice jokes? the restrain.

[@alex4alexn]

also thank you to the guy who sent the diffusion pump, but you are the man!

[@mikehorrocks2909]

Dude, that DIY ultrasonic cleaner was perfect! 👌 I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw how well it worked!🤣🤣🤣

[@gizelle-s]

A lot of KZbinrs go through the same kind of burnout and perfectionism. There's a podcast that is run by a bunch of science youtubers called Safety Third where they talk about it a lot. So you are not alone.

[@binkuspinkus8400]

hell yeah dude, you’re one of very few people halfway-competently doing cool punk engineering shit that isn’t useless plastic garbage. If I had the space for a shop right now, I can only hope I’d have half your energy and ingenuity.

[@cberge8]

That's an amazing large format ultrasonic cleaner!

[@pyro_y0]

"What's the opposite of concentric? Procentric...?" 😂

[@darmichar73]

I honestly have no idea what the hell you are doing here, but I love watching you do it. Keep up the good work man.

[@Tristoo]

well if the principle was working, there isn't much reason the whole thing shouldn't be working to the numbers you expected. my best guesses are 1. the gaskets are outgassing (again, any kind of rubber or plastic will to some degree, and that's some pretty big surface area) 2. the oil you're using could also be outgassing, people will often "cook" it by just leaving the pump on for a long time until all the components of the oil that can outgas do, or 3. it is the roughing pump, maybe it's own oil or some gasket or something else outgassing to the point where it overpowers the diffusion pump. I'm betting on option 1, so maybe try using some soft metals as gaskets, and weld a lip on the pipe joints to bite into those gaskets. Like the copper ones, sam zeloof has a pretty good video on them but I have no doubt you can do it without all the fancy clamps and stuff. After that I'd try cooking the oil for a few days, and if that doesn't work just wipe everything down extremely well with acetone, make sure there's no finger juice on anything, and then if everything in the chamber is immaculate you'll know it's the roughing pump.

[@Robonza]

I bought a gas torch from Aliexpress for 30 bucks that connects to my barbeque tank. Its works well and never runs out.

[@UltimateMaking]

We learn so much with your achivements and your mistakes man it's awesome, there is no channel like yours around here and you're an inspiration to all of us

[@amogusenjoyer]

Fou de te voir ici hahahaha

[@gutrali]

Another tip for you. I had to go back in your videos and find the diffusion pump you first tried to make. This was the only way I found out WHY you are building one of these. I had to go a little further to find out how it works. I thought I understood the world pretty well but there was still a TON here that I had to research to learn. I think you would benefit a little bit if you mentioned your other video , linked to parts in it, and/or mentioned your main purpose for doing the work seen in this video. It helps connect the puzzle pieces which means more ppl will end up doing so -- and your channel would likely benefit. At the same time, THANK YOU for not doing the "subscribe and like" BS that everyone else does

[@JohnDoe-yv3vq]

You can't say it's unworthy... You put a ton of effort into it, you are cool man. Hav ya daenger and never let ya ass be sad. :)

[@peterspencer6442]

This is fantastic, you fabricated a working diffusion pump! Your vacuum reading could easily be the gauge being close to it's limit! I'd be willing to put some money on the pressure being lower than you think. If you can pick up a Penning gauge (a.k.a) Cold Cathode gauge, those are great: Some of the old style ones are robust, you can clean some of them with wet and dry paper when you need to (I found Edwards ones to be easy to fix unless the metal inside has worn away, others can be but have tiny parts inside). Another one is ion gauges (hot cathode/alpert bayard) but they are pricey and used ones can give weird readings if the were abused and they are easy to kill (or so I am.. *ahem* told). I'm so glad you shared this! It's inspirational! PS Burn out sucks and it also shows you care, take care of yourself!

[@EthanBolli]

Yo, that's way damn good. I've been looking into vacuum pumps from a hobyist standpoint ,and you've been consistently making it look feasible. I aughta give my local goodwill a peruse.

[@scottpeterson5241]

You are worthy! Honestly really impressive build out of goodwill coffee cups brazed together and a harbor freight vacuum pump. The proof is in the pudding, or in this case the worthy video 👍

[@bruceboggemes9724]

your Goodwill is better than my Goodwill. True story.

[@cxob2134]

The imperfect projects are way better than the spotless stuff most maker channels post. Good stuff!

[@adrianhenle]

Nice work, man. Keep fucking up and learning! We're all here for it.

[@henriryonankoski]

Yes great content, I love your shit. Keep it coming, don't hold yourself. This is the most entertaining and educating makerstuff in yt.

[@philpage9942]

Well done, you've got my respect for what your doing. Also, to pick up on 'HomeDistiller' below - you could probably benefit on a quality vacuum gauge - or at least get it checked against a quality gauge.

[@tvathome562]

Respect, really appreciate it when someone shares their mistakes, it kinda bonds us all as fallible humans. Learning by failing is long, but you learn more that way, it's a richer journey. Plus the do it movies, the hero always fails at least once, so you know its got to be true :)

[@EricDalgetty]

Dude that is awesome! That it held 270mtorr that long is a testament to your welding skills. I'd love to see you try a sorption pump, there's a lot fewer parts

[@Cerberus606]

Finally I have been dying to see the next episode of this build!

[@ProlificInvention]

Hell yes, excellent video man. Good to see you.

[@steffankaizer]

what a champ. we can all aspire to be like him, a man of determination, adhd, ingenuity and risk of burnout. minus the burnout of course

[@gannas42]

I was just wondering last night what your next video would be. Timely delivery! Very cool stuff, man. Sorry to hear you are dealing with burnout. You aren't alone.

[@bjarnevarme9830]

Cody’s lab made a vacuum pump out of circulating mercury, looks very simple in the design.

[@ninefingerdeathgrip]

Sprengel pump. Problem is that in many parts of the world that for a private person mercury is practically impossible to buy, at least without special permit and those are hard to get due to it's toxicity and environmentally harmful effects.

[@davidbi9765]

You could also try a titanium sublimation pump as these are incredibly simple but only to be used in combination with a good roughing pump

[@williamvanniekerk5608]

Im subbed to hundreds of channels if not a thousand+ Its good to see there are still some authentic creators out there, youve got such a unique personality and it made this video so fun to watch, keep it up man A easye 10 out of 10 in my book 😌👏🏻🙌🏻✌🏻💯

[@kimberlyjacobsen4148]

Thanks for posting your previous perceived failures for us to enjoy. Your freaking awesome. Never forget! your failure make us all better !

[@jdwolk7807]

I’m 100% in it for the eff ups and the “good ‘nuffs”. Gives me hope as a maker. Keep on keepin on and thanks for putting up the video 👍

[@StormSilvawalker]

A couple years ago I built one of these too and it's up on my yt channel. I used exhaust parts instead of other stainless and used jb weld in place of brazing since I read somewhere it could perform well at high vacuum. My experiment failed but it's nice to be able to compare and contrast the different approaches you tried and now I want to try it again! You've earned a subscriber cause your projects are awesome!

[@storminmormin14]

I’m pretty sure with your tools you could build a rotary vacuum pump for way cheaper than buying one.

[@sintaxera]

Wooo! Best channel on the tubes

[@FinlayShellard]

Amazing video man, like always it never has to work perfectly, as its all about the journey, saying that I feel like some toast.

[@tenet-rotas]

Im always so fucking impressed with your videos man... The stuff you build out of essentially scrap and the amount of work you are willing to put in is just crazy! Don't be so harsh on yourself - you're awesome!

[@johnross3752]

Love the wobble 10 Points

[@seabeepirate]

I love seeing stuff made out of trash. Maybe it wasn’t trash before you cut it up but it definitely got a new life doing something other than sitting on a shelf at goodwill. It was pretty cool to see this thing work, even if it didn’t perform as well as you hoped! There’s at least as much knowledge available in failures as there is in successes so don’t be afraid to post videos of unfinished projects because they’re also useful and you’re good at making them entertaining. P.S. Any interest in Stirling engines? They’ve always been fascinating to me.

[@seabeepirate]

Watching this video again I thought, if moving fast and breaking things is good enough for SpaceX it’s good enough for Crank Town City. Cool project.

[@waldovanderwesthuizen4557]

Dude, I totally love your videos and your philosophy on making videos is spot on. I am also keenly following your progress on the diffusion pump, great project.

[@happosade]

That ultra/infrasonic cleaner, well done 👏 Loving your videos!

[@gabrielhacecosas]

Impressive, you'll get the emptiest vacuum. I'm looking forward to seeing it. The other day I saw a video of a popular science channel from South America that had made a pump similar to this one and he said it was even good for making vacuum valves, so I guess it would be good. I'll see if I can find the video and send it to you.

[@Pest789]

I'd buy that for a dinger

[@ChrisBigBad]

Looks more like an infra-sonic cleaner. Love it !

[@empressofmadness]

hell yeah brother! respect for reworkin it

[@Самоделионполезион]

It’s good that I have such a pump made at a company in Kazan, otherwise I saw how difficult it is to manufacture and adjust. There is VM -1 oil and a two-stage forevacuum Czechoslovakian.

[@Tristoo]

pretty sure the virtual leaks were about the rubber and plastics you used, not the tig welding. Tig welding just melts metal onto metal, and metal doesn't degas. if your welds don't look like swiss cheese you shouldn't have a problem, and even if they do, it shouldn't make reaching a high vacuum more than marginally slower as the only problem that would cause is gas settling in the holes for a little longer. I went back and read the comment, guy also talks about backing gas while welding to avoid oxides, but that can be fixed with scotchbrite and some acetone (I also don't see a reason oxides would actually degas, they usually have a considerably higher melting point than their non-oxidized counterparts which should mean they have an even harder time subliming under vacuum or more generally reacting in any way).

[@grantd8629]

It’s more to do with the pores in the oxide rather than the actual oxide and with tig welding if you’re doing a full penetration weld you absolutely need back purge. Imagine it as joining 2 pieces of pipe if you weld on it without a back purge the outside weld will look fine but the inside weld will be very porous and oxidized since the argon won’t be able to reach it

[@daveayerstdavies]

For pressures below 10 microns you really need to use a hot filament ionisation vacuum gauge. The good news is that the gauge sensor is really simple and an improvised gauge is easy to make from stuff you already probably have lying around.

[@badmacdonald]

i like the channel because you do what you can with what you have. you make interesting stuff. it makes it an entertaining channel.

[@matthewsnyder4211]

I just watched this entire video without knowing what a diffusion pump is. Kept my interest the whole time, Google here I come!

[@d.jensen5153]

Your diffusion pump videos are great on several levels. Years ago I bought a small used CENCO diffusion pump - but I talked myself out of giving it a try. After seeing the momentous efforts you've gone thru to make your own, I feel guilty, lazy, and maybe even idiotic. I pulled it out of storage today and am committed to heating it up. For all I know it will work better than I need it to work - 0.01 mm Hg is all I need.

[@jefffrasca4054]

Dude. This video was awesome and definitely why I hit the subscribe button months ago. I learned a ton. Thank you for posting it. Definitely worthy.

[@capnvariance]

you are about 18 months ahead of me, and still informative, and funny. I like it

[@ardouisur]

I have built a working fusor (that does detectable fusion) so know the dedication and expense involved. The creativity, effort and work you put into this project is massively impressive. I'd be very interested to see what this can do with a suitable two stage rouging pump, but you are already close to bottoming out the gauge, you ideally want a deep vacuum gauge. Be awesome to see a fusor build to, with the kit and skills you have you could build a really nice custom chamber.

[@LesNewell]

It's too late now but did you consider tig brazing? It would have resulted in a lot less cleanup. I only though of it because the other day I found the aluminum bronze rods I bought a couple of years back intending to give it a try. Of course the package is still sealed because...well..um.. I'm too lazy to actually do anything.

[@zebdeming]

I'm glad you posted the video, everyone gets burnt out after a while, I'm in the middle of about a year without much progress on any of my projects, it happens. I'm heading out to the shop right now, thanks again for sharing all your "failures", they are more inspiring than you probably know!

[@squishy312]

We all need a break from reality and frustration. Great progress achieved! Have any fully built old pumps to chain them together? Using the 55 pump on the next iteration should get you to where you need to be. Moar is sometimes better.

[@klausnielsen1537]

Great video return! I loved it. You might not realise this, but what carries your channel is not the quality of results you get. But how your personality shines through to me when you show the honest struggle to get the $#1*@$$ thing to work. Love your gung ho style and presentation.

[@hemerythrin]

Coming from your lowering the bar video... This was great! I'm glad you decided to post it

[@TeslaFactory]

Absolutely amazing! I envy your metalworking skills and setup! You're achieving really great things, bro 😍

[@CemKumral]

55 microns with coffee cups is amazing, how many people do you think could do that?

[@KieranShort]

I love your videos. Proper entertainment. The look of your Mrs in the store was reminiscent of mine on many such occasions! Hilarious

[@aegis3d]

Missed your videos dude! Love the screwing around and see how far you can get attitude.

[@gutrali]

Love your interaction with your subscribers. Please keep doing that. It naturally becomes harder as your subs increase -- which is part of the reason it is not common and so refreshing to see. Since BBS discussion forums, ive always believed in the Power of numbers. aka the Hive mind

[@joels7605]

This channel is gold.

[@gustavfranklin]

WORTHY, man!

[@jerrydaugherty4657]

Dude! Kick ass! I know this one is late - but the silicon oil is also available as transformer silicon fluid… generally lands about $35/gallon more or less. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t just give you absolute thumbs-up for everything you’re doing!

[@aerodesic1]

I'm rather impressed with your results. One of my previous jobs used a diffusion pump that required about 5 gallons of oil! Was a bit bigger than a 50 gallon drum. Needless to say it took a few kw for the heater. Princple was the same and the stack looked a lot like your home-made unit, 'cept being way bigger and too heavy to lift without a crane.

[@FourthWayRanch]

ya, need symmetry to get the nice umbrella effect with the oil. it's hard to get a diffusion pump going too, even when you have a commercial version with a good vaccum roughing pump and trap.

[@hgbugalou]

I like any of your projects, they don't all have to be mind bending.

[@julias-shed]

Great work keep going we love it 😀

[@fb___4255]

Great video as usual man! I hope your business is thriving. Hopefully we'll see another video soon, I also thought that you could try making a powdered metal 3D printer as a project. Keep it going!

[@weirdsciencetv4999]

How did I not find this gem of a man sooner? Subscribed!

[@nefariousyawn]

I'm really glad you made this video. You wrapped it up well at the end. Thanks!

[@kob8082]

11:19 you could probably use a thermal epoxy to hold it in place and for heat transfer

[@alex4alexn]

cant wait until you are at 100k subs, keep it up brother

[@excitedbox5705]

You should bake the pump and chamber to get moisture out of the surface. Also leaving it running for a long time will help it go down more after a while. You may be hitting a few walls on the way down that just take some time to break through. IE. once you hit the vapour pressure required for moisture to come out of your oil, it will stop going down till the moisture is gone. The same goes for the metal surfaces. Your guage could also cause problems. Look for a pirani gauge on aliexpress for around $20.

[@memejeff]

That is a good enough vaccuum for a lot of devices. You could probably do sputtering with that vaccuum. I think this video was super cool and I could definitely see real uses for it.

[@QuanrumPresence]

This is so amazing and inspiring man! Keep at it, please take more suggestions from experts in the comments sections. And by that virtue more folks will comment and help you out! Win-win

[@jordanbennett6461]

55 microns is amazing! So glad you uploaded

[@reinholdu9909]

Don't burn out on us here bro. - YOU can do ANYTHING...(except maybe washin' your hands ;-) !THANKS! I'll be here waiting for your stuff

[@storminmormin14]

Helium leak testing doesn’t work because the pressure jumps up. It works because a mass spectrometer on a helium leak tester machine detects the atoms of helium entering and uses a turbo pump to pull them out. A method that might work for you is to keep running your roughing pump but then put isopropyl alcohol on the seals. If you see the pressure sharply rise then stop suddenly then you have a leak. The pressure rises because alcohol vapor enters the chamber but then the alcohol quickly freezes. This is a pretty good indicator of a leak. Helium leak testers are stupid expensive. Rubbing alcohol is cheaper but you won’t find as many leaks.

[@peterspencer6442]

Great tip! The alcohol technique works really well with high vacuum gauges (penning/ion gauges) because the gauge smashes the molecule apart giving a really high reading!

[@grantd8629]

Both right and wrong, I was the guy who suggested the helium trick and I probably should have mentioned it really only works if you have a very accurate gauge and can get to a much lower pressure, my bad lmao. Also helium leak detectors are definitely the best method and they’re actually not that expensive if you know where to look ;) got one for just 500$ plus shipping

[@nickfish4193]

Love it, man. This video is definitely worthy. I always look forward to your videos, so thanks for making them!

[@JeremyRoberts007]

Let's go!

[@subverted]

Very impressive job assembling all those parts into one for the pumping stack. Had me a bit concerned at first with the brazing but you really pulled that together. With how fast the pressure dropped you definitely had the diffusion pump functioning which is quite an achievement. Did you try more than just that one vacuum gauge? Wonder if your struggle with the last few microns was just some error in the gauge reading...but I am not super familiar with the way thermistor vacuum sensors work.

[@peterspencer6442]

I think you're making a good call about the gauge, I'd bet the pressure is definitely lower than those readings.

[@ryanrose8856]

Dude, you videos are the best! I look forward to your next installment!

[@Самоделионполезион]

You can do an experiment to obtain a high vacuum using a mechanical pump operating in a vacuum environment (at the inlet of such a pump there is a vacuum.) The working volume can be large, it is easy for it to pump the remaining gas molecules, and a large volume allows for productivity. I’m not sure about the feasibility of such a pump, but it is only possible

[@billallen6109]

I love the style of your videos. They're a lot of fun to watch. Keep it up

[@spudjames5038]

I prefer Red Bull and grapefruit juice. Refreshing! Don't blow up!! Love what you do

[@N312RB]

I've got to try that

[@RichardCranium321]

I came for the content, but stayed for the memes