For a while I have wanted to put one of my acrylic vacuum chambers under water to determine the location of any air leaks. Good news is the solvent welded joint between the acrylic cylinder and the end flanges is leak free. I am still studying techniques to build an optically clear joint at this point but this would be a cosmetic improvement only because the joints already appear to be air-tight. More on this later.

But, I found a small leak at the viton seals. The end plates are attached to the flanges on the acrylic cylinders using four fasteners as seen in the picture below. The end plates are 6 mm thick acrylic which flex just enough that there isn’t sufficient pressure on the viton seal at the mid-point of the end plates. I have ordered 9 mm thick end plates to test if this solves the problem. I’ll provide updates later.

With thicker end plates and a better feed through as described in my December 7th post perhaps there is life in the acrylic version yet. Parts for the improved feed through are being couriered to me as write this blog.

Other progress over that last two weeks includes testing a breadboard version of the Microchip Technology AT42QT2120-SU capacitive touch sensor integrated circuit. I plan to use this for a remote control. This will be an alternative to using the iOS remote described elsewhere on this website. Again more on this later.