Through the assembly and construction of vacuum chamber systems, different fabrication techniques such as machining, buffing and cementing, can cause stress on acrylic sheet components. The appearance of cracks in the material, called crazing, can occur when acrylic that has been internally stressed comes into contact with solvents. Annealing works to reduce cracking and crazing by reducing internal stresses and increasing the strength of joints and the system as a whole.
Abbess Instruments is happy to anneal your acrylic vacuum chamber.
Here is a general overview of our annealing process:
- Set the temperature of the heating pads to a specific temperature
- Once the air temperature within the chamber reached our pre-defined point, we switch the control thermocouple for the temperature controller to an air temperature thermocouple using a manual switch
- We then remove all paper from acrylic sheets and load them into the oven.
- Close the oven and turn on the nitrogen