Hi,

so here's some more thoughts about the glove box:

- furnace

I found this mini furnace manufacturer: https://www.tabletopfurnace.com/

They are somewhat outside our price range, about $500, but otherwise they match quite well, e.g. https://www.tabletopfurnace.com/product/quikmelt-10/

That furnace is electrically powered (you probably shouldn't use a propane furnace indoors), it's tiny so less heat is wasted, and due to its size it should be possible to attach it to the back side of the glove box. I still think that having the furnace inside the box is a problem because the heat cannot escape well, but having it outside and connecting it through another opening in the box should be possible.

- insulation

You'll still probably have to thermically insulate the furnace from the glove box (even if the back wall is made of sheet metal and not acrylic). My first idea is to use calcium silicate boards, e.g. https://www.promat.com/en/industry/technologies/calcium-silicates/high-temperature-insulation/

These boards are used to insulate masonry heaters from walls and can take up to 1000°C -- the outside of the furnace is probably not as hot, so that should be enough. My guess is to use high-temperature mortar to glue the boards to the furnace (keeping the inside dust-free, it's a clean room after all) and something more flexible, e.g. high-temperature silicone, to glue the boards to the back side of the glove box. If both connections were rigid then it would break too easily, especially with thermal expansion.

The alternative would be rock wool, but that stuff is nasty (at least if it's similar to glass wool). Calcium silicate is similar to gypsum in handling, just more expensive.

- spin coater

My first idea to make this cheap is an axle connected to a disk and mounted in such a way that the axle can spin but not tilt. You could then attach a handheld drill to the bottom of the axle to spin it.I still like the idea except that the disk has to be inside the glove box and the axle has to leave the box at the bottom, so keeping it dust-tight AND freely spinnable but not tiltable is the main challenge with that. Someone who is wiser in mechanics can probably do that easily.


Greetings,
Martin





On Sun, Apr 11, 2021 at 12:24 PM David Lanzendörfer <leviathan@libresilicon.com> wrote:
Hi
Maybe you can join today 6pm UTC on our Mumble server murmur.libresilicon.com
and we can discuss where to best place the airlock and how to build it the
easiest and cheapest way?

Cheers
-lev

On Sunday, April 11, 2021 8:17:01 AM WEST Martin Geisse wrote:
> Hi David,
>
> some ideas / questions:
> > I was thinking about using sheet metal for everything
>
> Pardon my ignorance, but how are you going to see what you are doing in
> there? Did you mean that one side is still acrylic? Front or top?
>
> > airlock
>
> If this is on the side wall, then it is probably hard to reach with your
> hands. On the other hand, the back wall (opposite of the gloves) is the
> most precious space you have and "wasting" it for the airlock is not good
> either...
>
> A quick idea would be to attach the airlock at the bottom, with the outer
> door facing towards you and the inner door being a "trap door" in the
> bottom of the box.
>
> > tools
>
> If everything happens inside the box, space is even more precious. You'll
> need storage for the materials and chemicals, illumination stage, hot
> plate, spin coater, furnace, ... A rotating shelf on the back side might be
> a solution for that.
>
> OTOH, an unsolved problem is be what the residual heat of the furnace is
> going to do to the acrylic box...
>
> > gloves
>
> Gloves always bring the danger of trapping hazardous chemicals *inside*,
> right next to your hands. You'll probably need a material that withstands
> *all* of those chemicals, otherwise you might have the piranha etch make
> the gloves porous and then HF leak through them... A simple warning not to
> spill anything over the gloves is probably not enough because these things
> just happen anyway.
>
> Greetings,
> Martin
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 11:33 PM David Lanzendörfer <
>
> leviathan@libresilicon.com> wrote:
> > Hi
> > I was thinking about using sheet metal for everything which doesn't need
> > to be
> > transparent (even cheaper than acrylic glas).
> > For the airlock I was figuring I could do a cut out like in the attached
> > screen and fold it, then either weld or screw an aluminum box made from
> > folded
> > sheet metal as well.
> >
> > What do you think?
> >
> > Cheers
> > -lev_______________________________________________
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> > Libresilicon-developers@list.libresilicon.com
> > https://list.libresilicon.com/mailman/listinfo/libresilicon-developers