[time-nuts] OT - but of interest?

Gregory Muir engineering at mt.net
Sun Apr 28 00:20:35 UTC 2013


On Sat, 27 Apr 2013 12:06:45 -0700 (PDT), L. Forster wrote:

>When I was building space payloads, every component had to meet or exceed
>a VCM (Volitile Condensible Material) spec.

>This was mainly of concern with plastics, like wire insulation (we used
>Teflon and Kapton) but especially potting compounds.

>And, don't even think about ball bearings near optics in scanners!!

>-John

Most of our payloads revolved around high-resolution optics including high dispersion
spectrographs.  Mechanical items were either verboten or encountered serious design reviews
that frequently made you put your optics in a separate container.

Even with space QPL'd parts, I would be amazed at the goop that the techs would clean out of
the vacuum tunnel diffusion pump traps at the end of the test cycles from all of the compounds
that migrated into them.

Greg




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