The first thing is the bell jar. Its made from a 'recorder jar' from a milking parlor.(Thanks again to Mr Hart!) I picked three up at local farmers auction. Cheap too!
As far as I know they were used to keep track of how much milk was being sucked out of the poor cows. We like them because they are made for vacuum use.
This is how they look in their original state. Closed at the top and bottom. An amazing piece of glass.
I went to Ireland's only scientific glass blower(details below) and got him to cut the bottom off one. It was borosilicate, the others seem to be nonpyrex glass. I'm not sure what they are made of.
The good news was that the boroglass one had two openings at the top. Perfect for the sputtering setup I was hoping for. I wanted to isolate the baseplate from the sputtering power supply.(Note: the pump and therefore the baseplate is earthed and that is the same potential as the magnetron, so this makes it not really isolated from the sputtering power supply. I don't know what else to do!)
I believe finger prints can be an issue in high vacuum, I wonder if foot prints are an issue too?!
The name of the scientific glass blowing company is Lab Glass Services. They are in The Grange, Oldtown, North County Dublin. Talk to Colm a very helpful chap! 01 8433442
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