There are four ports on the vacuum chamber and thanks to a recent purchase of a blank off eBay (shown below), I now have two left to cover. Of the two remaining ports, one is the port through which the vacuum pump will be attached and the other will be the port used for bringing in the microwave waves. The vacuum port will be made from acrylic and it should be a simple matter of drilling a hole through the acrylic, then giving it a thread and screwing in a 3/8″ connector. I haven’t figured out the microwave port yet.
I also finished the wood mold as shown and after trying my first idea of cutting one piece to cover the entire mold, realized it is not going to work. My next idea was metal spinning and aftering annealing the copper to make it more malleable (and to keep it from wrinkling), I mounted a small piece of copper on the mold to test with:
However, when I reattached the mold I didn’t center it well enough and at 200RPM it wobbled enough to send the detached piece (shown) flying clear out of the garage.
Metal spinning is the way to go, but I have to think up a better method and maybe get a harder wood. It turns out there are lots of place in Canada that do metal spinning and I will looking at getting a few quotes too.