Creating a double boiler vacuum oven
By James Binnion
In “A Sure Cure,” which appears in the September 2017 issue of MJSA Journal, I detailed the experiments I conducted to cure photopolymer models using a vacuum and low-heat procedure in an effort to reduce the issue of investment degradation during burnout and result in castings with better surface finishes. If you’d like try this at home, you’ll need a vacuum with a Thermistor gauge that reads in microns of mercury, as well as a 2-stage vacuum pump capable of producing vacuum pressures of less than 25 microns. You’ll also need a well-sealed vacuum oven chamber capable of holding pressures in the range of 10 to 15 microns, which you can easily create at home by following these instructions.
To create a vacuum oven, you’ll need the following parts: