By Phil Danielson
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By Phil Danielson
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Vacuum Technology Third, Updated and Enlarged Edition This book, although written as a general purpose vacuum technology text, has a particular interest to the vacuum technology practitioner because the author has also written “Vacuum Sealing Techniques,” which is one of the books reprinted in the AVS Classics series. Since the author had already written the most complete and influential book on vacuum sealing, curiosity is easily aroused to see how a wide-range and general text would be arranged and handled. The immediate answer is that the balance of all separate topics within the technology is maintained without vacuum sealing becoming an overweening topic of importance. Books that are written to serve a specific broad-band technology have to be viewed in terms of the particular audience they target. A vacuum technology book or text could range from how-to-do-it to completely theoretical and mathematical. It would seem that the author was interested in the medium range of experience and education in that most of the subjects that are susceptible to mathematics are introduced through derivation and calculation before being brought to the practical level of what to do with the concept and what does it mean to a practical vacuum system. This comes as no surprise since the original of this book grew out of post-graduate courses. “Vacuum Technology,” then, will probably not appeal to the beginner who doesn’t want to bog down in the mathematics, but will be extremely useful to the intermediate level practitioner who has already acquired a base of practical knowledge and hungers for deeper understanding. One the practical level, though, the author makes use of a number of useful nomograms to help the user easily determine critically useful numbers such as pumping speed, gas loads, pumpdown time, etc. This is one of the most complete collections of easy to use nomograms available in any vacuum text. The author, both in writing and in professional practice, was noted for being able to keep one foot in the practical while easily keeping the other in the theoretical. This book succeeds in maintaining this stance, but it allows the weakness of any book that is updated several times to emerge. The first edition (1976) easily balances the technology with a fairly complete coverage of the hardware, pumps, etc., at the time. By the third edition, the information on much of the various componentry, and especially pumps has fallen far behind. For example, high vacuum cryopumping is only covered by information on liquid helium pumps with no mention of the mechanically refrigerated cryopumps that have been on the market since about 1974 or so. The same can be said for turbomolecular pumps, molecular drag pumps, and most of the oil-free pumps on the market today. Accordingly, this book will be a disappointment to the beginner who intends to use a single book to get up to date quickly with the latest technology, but it will be a boon to the intermediate practitioner who wants a deeper understanding of practical knowledge acquired by experience. Descriptions of such things as desorption are among the clearest yet encountered. |
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