ok, been in the garage tonight working with this again & even pouring a new mold, everything works awesome... if I can believe the mightygauge I'm using at the moment then I'm pulling a little over 30"Hg, :tonguey: obviously this gauge isn't very accurate. the other day I ordered a good thrmistor type electronic digital gauge & sensor that reads down to 10 microns. measuring in microns I will be able to see even tiny changes & it should also be very accurate, just to really satisfy my curiosity & to be able to see it continue to pull down even further when it's at full vacuum & see exactly what I'm really hitting...
the gas line did not collapse, this line is pretty strong & really reminds me of the other vacuum stainless hoses that I've seen which is why I thought it might work so I bought it & it def does work well. the pot did not implode & everything just works fine, no leaks at all & even after I turn the pump off the whole system holds vacuum indefinitely, gasket & everything is fine, this pump really sucks, I hit full 30"Hg on my gauge in a little under 40 seconds...
I then mixed up a batch of resin & tried it out... mixed it up well until it was almost milky white from all the aeration & bubbles, then put it in the chamber & started pulling, funny that at ~25" of vacuum I get very little action, just slightly foams up a little. it isn't till I get over 28" that I start to see results, & the real results kick in when it hits the 29" & higher mark. I really think that if I only hit 27 or even 28 this might not work so well or even at all, at under 29 it foams up but just stays foamed up & stays static like that, doesn't really boil & purge bubbles or anything, but when I hit the 30 mark the resin foams up to the point of really overflowing the bucket that contains it unless I close the valve & regulate it manually... hold a bit, then burp it by releasing the vacuum then vacuum again, repeat as necessary rise & fall until it extracts enough air that I can maintain full vacuum with the foam risen without boiling over & let it continue under full high vacuum boiling & boiling until it settles back down close to the actual fluid level & stops boiling & very little action left, then it's done. it is still foamed up looking a little at that point but when I release the vacuum it drops down & it's just crystal clear. it really works nice even on this very thick viscosity resin.
I then tried a pour of this degassed resin in a modified mold that I prepped but still no go, I opened up the flow paths in this mold while waiting for the chamber to be done & thought it might fill but finally tried it again last night & it still only fills the mold half way. this resin is very thick, almost like molasses... at least now with the vacuum chamber though I can build a new mold with the better tin cure silicone & try to get it to work better than this existing mold so I started pouring that tonight. too late for pictures but I'll put some up tomorrow.
so far the chamber is a success. I did another test to see how well this works. water boils at 212deg F at sea level at normal atmospheric pressure, but the lower the atmosphere the lower the boiling point of water... at somewhere over 29" of vacuum water can boil at even room temperature & below. I had to try it out to see if it really was pulling this much vacuum so I put a bucket of cold water in, this is in my garage where it maybe hit 50 deg F if that, probably in the mid 40's or so really, it was very cold last night... well in about 30 seconds or so the cold water was boiling up a storm so violently that it was even splashing on the lid
tonight I had a container that was rinsed out with water & it was still wet with many droplets of water all over so I put it in the chamber under vacuum for ~5 minutes & it completely dried up every drop of water without a trace... this thing is pretty cool... pictures tommorow...
