Vacuum Pump and Gauge
I bought this vacuum pump, a Sargent-Welch "Directtorr"
model 8011, on e-bay a while back. When it first arrived, I found
that it had not been drained before shipping and, as there was no "this
end up" sign on the box, what I had was a box full of greasy stinky sludge
with a vacuum pump floating in it. After cleaning it up and flushing
it twice with motor oil I found that it did pull vacuum (although, at the
time, I had no idea how good of a vacuum it was producing). I e-mailed
the seller and chewed him out for not draining the pump or labeling the
box, but still gave him positive feed-back. I set the pump aside
and started checking e-bay for a vacuum gauge. When I finally got
around to needing it, I found that it was not pulling a very good vacuum.
Here's the problem, an inch thick layer of stinky, rusty, greasy crud.
This picture was taken five days, two rolls of paper towels, 500 Q-tips
and a pint of white gasoline later. The inner surfaces of the pump
mechanism looked much better than I had feared.
Picture of vacuum gauge showing a pressure of 160 microns of mercury
(0.21 mBar) generated by the rebuilt pump.