In the manufacturing industry, it is common practice to manually turn valves to achieve a ramp rate that ensures the material of interest is not sucked out.  Consistent process control is critical; if manual, this can be very difficult to do accurately in medium or high vacuum situations. Sometimes, a few modifications to existing technology achieves a very slow initial evacuation using a ramp rate of 126 Torr/hour so as not to disturb the material of interest, while achieving an ultimate vacuum below 100 microns, all automatically.

To learn about a user example, wherein the user wanted to prevent a flour-like substance from being sucked into the vacuum pumps during initial evacuation.

If you would like to speak with the engineer who designed this solution, click here.