Now and then....

[Peter Ward]

With the release of a new Beatles track using new AI tech, to mine old gems, I thought I should follow suit.

Attached is an image of my revamped Hypering tank.

The tank itself was kindly made for me, gratis, by the team at Qantas engineering Mascot in the 1990's.
I suspect the work of those wonderful gentlemen has long since been outsourced to someone in Manilla.

I sourced the thermostat controller and Vacuum pump (good to about 0.1 torr) about the same time while passing through Singapore.

Why, in a time of digital imaging, would you want to hyper-sensitize photographic film? I don't...but...

Desiccant plugs in astro-cameras is the answer!

Subjecting a desiccant to a 80C bake in a reasonably hard vacuum
(approximates space at low earth-orbit) one can drive any moisture from the plugs
in under an hour without risk of melting the internal desiccant granules

(OK I'll fess up....No AI was actually required)

But fresh vacuum pump oil certainly helped

The freshly plumbed and cleaned rig still works a treat.

[ChrisV (Chris)]

I had to google this to figure out what it was used for !! I like the decimal switch controller (??) on the left.
The thread should be tagged for posterity (and my ignorant comment removed)

Thanks for showing

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by ChrisV

I had to google this to figure out what it was used for !! I like the decimal switch controller (??) on the left.
The thread should be tagged for posterity (and my ignorant comment removed)

Thanks for showing

The thermostat is indeed digital.

Short answer is cooled CCD/CMOS cameras do not like water vapour in their chambers as it can show up as ice on a sensor when cooled below freezing.

Desiccant chamber plugs are one fix for that problem.

But...when 'de plug is full of water, it needs drying out...or replacing. (read $$)

Water boils at room temperature in a good vacuum. Place the plug in a heated vacuum....Voila!

Problem solved

[Leo.G (Leo)]

That's a genius solution.
My son wanted to build a server room under the house (we get too much water under there for it to be feasible) and had looked into automatically rotating the trays of desiccant and having heater elements (or heat output from the servers themselves) to dry the trays.
He had every base covered from fire retardation (Argon) after multiple safety checks to make sure no one was in the room. He put a lot of thought into the design, if only we could redirect the run off water.
Speaking of run off, there's a huge storm just hit, it's going to be a mud bath under the house again.