 This system will attain a vacuum of 1.0E-06 torr within a
period of less than 2 hours. It will maintain any temperature between -150°C and +150°C
as well as ramp to these temperatures under normal exponential rise or fall, or controlled
rise or fall using adjustable ramps from 10°C to 120°C per hour. This chamber will also
maintain Humidity at 5% to 90%RH over the temperature range of 20°C to 85°C and at
atmospheric pressure. The design is described in the Vacuum Chamber
systems design and fabrication page. The environmental chamber is controlled by a control
panel which is located remotely from the chamber since personnel are to be removed as far
as possible from the irradiator when the rods are up (irradiation is in progress).The central controller is a Koyo® PLC with a basic serial module and multiple input and output modules which control the valves, solenoids, heaters, solid state relays, lamps and switches. The PLC has an analog input module to monitor the temperature from the copper block, the outer chamber skin, the nitrogen leak detection probe, the humidity sensor, the bubbler temperature, and the temperature of the humid air entering the chamber. An MKS® vacuum controller monitors both the roughing pressures (pirani gauges) and the high vacuum pressure at the inlet to the turbomolecular pump (cold cathode) and the high vacuum at the copper plate (hot cathode). An Exor® display provides a user friendly interface for the operator. There is an interface between the console and any computer that can run LabView® software or for that matter any software that can communicate via serial cable. This interface provides the ability to setup a profile which the test personnel can preprogram into their software and which the console will follow. This provides setting and reading the temperature, ramp rate, pressure, humidity, at any time during the test. The system is setup to use LabView® from a Macintosh® computer though a PC can also be used. The computer can both monitor and control the test. |
