Any idea how to bake the column of a SEM?

[Old_Bob]

I am an undergraduate researcher and my university had an SEM donated to us by DOW chemical. It since has been without power and we have to bake the column and the gun chamber. Contacting the company they estimate $17k to send someone out to do it for us. I'm having difficulty finding material online for how to do this. Does anyone know how?

 

[phyzguy]

In my past experience we baked out vacuum systems by wrapping them with heater tape. This is a metallic tape with a resistive wire inside that heats up when you pass current through it. If you google "heater tape" you will find several sources. You wrap the heater tape around the vacuum chamber and then pump on it while you heat it up to drive off volatile contaminants.

 

[Old_Bob]

Thank you! I'll look into it