IIIIIII need help to clarify doubt about: : How would you make a simple vacuum chamber with the dimensions of 5″ deep, 6″ wide, and 6′ tall?
Should it have corners or be round, or would that matter?
How do you vacuum it? An industrial machine or something else?
Try this:
Answer by Use Magnets
You said it was simple. So how is it hard?
Use a cylinder, it’s less likely to compress in high vacuum situations.
There are many machines available to create a vacuum within an object. You could go with a vacuum cleaner, but in all reality it won’t work that well.
Add your own answer in the comments!
I built one almost with those exact dimensions. I used 1/2″ plywood to make the box then I coated the outside with Platic-dip rubber paint. (You can get this at Home Depot.) This seals the boax against the air pressure on the outside. I left the top open. A piece of clear 3/8″ plastic was the top. I coated the plywood edge on the top with bathtub caulk to seal it. I put the piece of clear plastic on top while the caulk was drying so that the top would be perfectly flat. (spray PAM frying pan spray on the peice of plastic first so it doesn’t stick.
For the vacuum, I bought one of those handheld vacuum pumps from Edmunds Scientific. This attached to by box with a metal nozzle.
Well, I guess you can take it from there. Have fun.
The dimensions imply it’s a cuboid, a rectangular solid. But if you need the lightest possible weight, a sphere is better as it distributes the forces better, and you can use less material.
A 6″x6″ side has to withstand a force of 14.7 PSI x 36 sq inch = 530 pounds. So the metal has to be strong enough to handle that force.
Rounding the corners doesn’t help much. A cylinder is a good compromise between sphere and cuboid.
How you create the vacuum depends on how good a vacuum you need. A perfect vacuum is not possible, so you have to decide that, and pick the vacuum pump to handle that. For the highest vacuum, you need a series of pumps all working together.
I’d take a piece of PVC water pipe, heat it and compress on one side to achieve the 5″ x 6″ dimensions, and of course 6′ length.
You wrote round, if something is round it wouldn’t be 5″ x 6″, but if that is only the minimum dimensions then I’d not compress it, leaving it 6″ or whatever larger diameter allows sufficient space.
Cement pipe end caps on it, drill a hole for a brass nipple, and epoxy that on (before cementing the end cap on.
Use vacuum tubing and a vac pump to achieve the desired vac level. With minor modification even a plain old electric tire pump can be made into a vac pump with moderate performance (but slow by industrial standards).
It depends on how good a vacuum you want. Atm pressure is about 14.7 psi. Your box has to be strong enough to prevent the atm pressure from crushing it. One face of your box is 6″ square = 36 sq inches. If you had a perfect vacuum, the pressure would be 14.7 X 36 = 529 lbs on that face. If you only need one half an atm of pressure, then that face only has to hold ~265 lbs.
Whether the corners are square or round does not matter so long as the corners are strong enough.