Some UHV tricks

Electro polish everything small enough
 to get into a 1000ml beaker

Per MDC: add a auxiliary valve to a gate valve to
 allow venting a small subsection of the chamber.

Per Yeats: Add a keg or other vessel behind the turbo
 to allow extended running w/o the foreline pump. 

Scrounge variac boxes from discarded
fume hood. Re-wire as bakeout consoles.

This is a small submersible e-chem cell that uses a Keck Clamp for the sealing force.
Parts are Teflon  Viton, and an IDEX micro-fluidics fitting. This was designed with extra material and the ability to turn one face to make a snug sealed fit. It can be adapted to measure on the face of the surface exposed to the fluid, or the back in the case of conducting substrates. We may make a new version of this with the IDEX fitting inserted in the side.

Berth for the Flagship

STM A was given a new home at CNSI during the move. This is the Acoustical chamber which was assembled on site from parts pre-fabricated to prints. The chamber fit in the room exactly as spec'ed, the optical table fit in the chamber as spec'ed and the instrument fit on the optical table as spec'ed. Tolerances for fits were a little as 1 inch in the space where the dewar and support equipment is lowered into the pit underneath the table by the overhead crane.

New claw for vertical sample transfer in UHV

STM B, the lab's second UHV STM, had a very troublesome method for sample transfer  It used an outside grasping claw that had no positive contact. Thus it was possible to drop the sample. This compound claw grabs an ID ring thus once engaged, cannot fall off. Additionally it uses shoulder screws in compound shear and simple strong parts throughout. Hopefully grad students will take a while to break it and be able to fix it easily when they do. All Stainless steel save for the little thrust washers which are wire EDM'ed 945 bronze .005 thick. Design was super simple, easy to machine and modify. All parts were electro-polished.