On Aug 18, 5:48 pm, Bryce wrote:

Ah, I remember spending hours one Monday cleaning vacuum pump oil off of
EVERYTHING (e.g.: dielectric coated laser mirrors). Guano happens.

How about some sort of watchdog against future disaster? Perhaps a vacuum
sensor to initiate a delayed shut down of the rotary pump and some way to
gracefully leak the system up to atmosphere?


Luckily this was an easy cleanup. A little bit of that kitty-litter
stuff they use on oil spills and it was done.

I'd need a sensor that would signal if the pressure stayed above a
certain level and then power down the rotary pump.

Problem with a sensor like that is I would need to keep the "trigger
pressure" really high otherwise I'd have to clean my foreline trap all
the time.
The system leaks to atmosphere fine... seems like the problem is going
to be powering off the rotary pump if the safety valve fails...


I suppose I just hope my next safety valve doesn't melt on me.