Uncertain Principles: A Stainless Steel Baby Bottle

Assembling UHV systems.

If this sounds like kind of a pain in the ass, you’re right. If you look at the picture of the flange above, you can see that there are 20 bolt holes on the flange, each of which must be cranked down hard enough to cut into the copper. Better yet, you need to make sure that the compression is uniform, which means tightening the bolts in a star pattern– tighten one bolt, then the bolt on the opposite side, then a bolt 90 degrees from the initial bolt, then the bolt opposite that one, and so one. It’s tons of fun. Better still, each bolt (on this particular flange, anyway) is coated with a grey anti-seize grease that is next to impossible to get off your hands.