Outgassing and Test Facility Availability

28/9/2020

Our outgassing (ECSS-Q-ST-70-02) test facility has seen increasing demand over the past few years and 2020 it seems is no different. The facility is currently booked until the second half of January 2021. If you are looking to book an outgassing test please contact us sooner rather than later to avoid disappointment.

Similarly our vacuum test chambers seeing an increase in demand towards the end of the year, so if you are looking to make an enquiry for an urgent test or looking to book a test for next year this is worth keeping in mind.

At the start of 2020 we took delivery of a new TVAC chamber which we had scheduled to come online mid 2020. However during the UK covid-19 response in March we undertook large scale improvements to our test house involving a new floor being poured and laid along with a complete re-wiring of the laboratory to support the additional equipment we have installed. This required a complete dismantling of all of our test chambers and equipment in order to clear the lab.

Due to this disruption, along with the increased test and manufacturing demand in the second half of the year, we have had to delay the commissioning of TVAC#3 into 2021. Work has continued on the machining of the thermal exchange plate and installation of the pumps on the chamber system. However final run-up and testing is not scheduled until the start of 2021. Once ready the additional chamber in our facility will increase throughput and reduce wait times for TVAC tests.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our customers who have either been using us for years or have just found is this year. We realise being busy is a very nice problem to have right now and so we thank you for choosing us for your test work.

A Busy Start to 2020

19/2/2020

Test Schedules

So far 2020 has seen our test house facilities in fairly constant use. We are also planning improvements to our laboratory space along with the movement of some equipment and tooling facilities to another unit. As such we are currently booked out to the end of May for longer term testing, with some short-term availability at the beginning of April.

For our outgassing customers, our dedicated outgassing testing facility will not be disrupted by the planned facility works.

TVAC#3 and Facility Upgrades

At the end of 2019 we took delivery of a new chamber which is to become TVAC#3. We are expecting delivery of the pumps and other hardware in the coming weeks (the pumping system will be the same as TVAC#1 and #2 i.e. oil free). We had planned to begin work on setting up the chamber at the start of 2020 but our test house has had a rather busy start to the year so it has, frustratingly, had to wait.

We are also about to start, in the coming month, upgrading our lab facility. A new floor will be poured and laid as well as an overhaul to the power distribution and facilities within the lab. As with all big projects, we plan for everything to go to schedule and be back up and running within 1-2 weeks but there is the possibility of delays getting our chambers re-commissioned and ready.

December Update and News

2/12/2019

New TVAC Chamber TVAC#3 for 2020

We are continually looking at where we can improve our equipment and test services as well as invest in additional equipment. In 2018 our second TVAC chamber TVAC#2 came online and toward the end of that year we purchased and and set up our in-house FTIR facility for molecular contamination monitoring (in accordnace with ECSS-Q-ST-70-05C). Throughout 2019 our existing TVAC chambers have been in high demand so we are pleased to announce that we will be commissioning our third TVAC chamber (surprisingly called TVAC#3) in early 2020. The chamber is identical to TVAC#2 in terms of size and will be configured with the same oil-less pumping system and thermal interface plate. For additional details and announcements on this system follow our news section or contact us to sign up to our newsletter.

Offgassing Testing

We have seen an increase in requests for offgassing testing throughout this year (not to be conflated with our outgassing test services). We have developed a method which is a variation of the “Gas Accumulation Method” (J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 20(5) Sept/Oct 2002 p 1667). This test can only currently be conducted in our TVAC#1 chamber as the experiment requires a gate valve.

If you require offgassing testing for your sample and are interested in our services, please feel free to contact us for a discussion.

Christmas Closing Dates

This year has gone by incredibly quickly and we'd like to thank all of our customers and welcome those who have found us in 2019. We look forward to working with you in 2020 and beyond.

Our Christmas closing period will be from:

Last day 2019 - Friday 20th December
First day 2020 - Thursday 2nd January

We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a very happy and productive 2020.

August Update and News

8/8/2019

Custom Outgassing Chambers

We have just shipped a custom outgassing chamber to a US customer. While our own outgassing facility is in virtually constant use, we haven't been contracted to build an outgassing test system in some time.

The thermal, vacuum pump and valve systems are fully computer controlled with the bell jar being lifted via an electrical screw jack. This makes operating the system in terms of loading samples, pumping down and bringing the Knudsen cells to temperature extremely user friendly. We were so pleased with it we were tempted to keep it for ourselves!

If you are interested in our outgassing chamber build, or our in-house outgassing services, please feel free to get in touch.

TVAC Testing Availability

We are lucky to have had the problem of too much work for our TVAC chambers through most of 2019. Both TVAC#1 and TVAC#2 are currently occupied, with TVAC#2 finally getting some down time for maintenance at the end of this month. TVAC#1 is currently occupied with a longer term R&D contract but is booked to be turned around immediately after.

We have upgrades for TVAC#2 currently in production, with a new cold shroud and IR mountings to improve cooling rates/min temperatures as well as reduce down time for things like IR lamp replacements. We've also increased the data feedthroughs available on the chamber which was necessary for another last-minute test, for which we were able to manufacture, clean, fit and leak test our own dual-dsub connector feedthrough in just under a week.

A Look Back At 2018

13/12/2018

Test House

All of our test house services (thermal vacuum chambers, outgassing test facility and vacuum UV exposure chambers) have been incredibly busy this year. We received delivery of our new vacuum chamber TVAC#2 in the last few days of 2017 and by July 2018 the system was put to work for flight hardware bakeouts and several thermal vacuum cycling tests. TVAC#1 is currently down for maintenance and should be back online beginning of 2019.

In June we also supported the 2018 edition of 'Aerospace Test & Validation' with various images from our test house equipment and solar simulator products. This is a new publication from the publishers of the Test House Directory focused specifically on the Aerospace industry. You can read the digital version here.

Our outgassing facility has been extremely busy also, with our facility taking part in the ESA inter-laboratory ECSS-Q-ST-70-02C outgassing quantification study in July this year.

In 2019 we will be expanding our test facilities to include FTIR capabilities. Check our news page or follow us on Twitter for announcements on this.

aerospace test and validation TS-Space Systems

Aerospace Test & Validation - 2018 featuring TS-Space Systems cover

Unisim Compact Solar Simulator - close match solar simulator for small research applications

Solar Simulators

Our solar simulator builds have also been consistent throughout the year, with several of our smaller Unisim Compact solar simulator systems shipping out. We have also had some larger system builds with custom specifications. We are also looking to at a short R&D project for our Unisim N-Zone simulators which will push their capabilities into larger working areas. The materials for this have just been delivered and will be scheduled when we start 2019.

Christmas Closing

We would like to thank all of our customers, old and new, for continuing to select our products and services in 2018 and we look forward to working with you in the future. From all of us at TS-Space Systems, we'd like to wish you a very Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year for 2019!

Last day opening 2018: Friday December 21st
First day opening 2019: Wednesday January 2nd

TVAC#2 Chamber Online

13/7/2018

We are pleased to announce that our second thermal vacuum test chamber, TVAC#2, is now fully tested and online. In the first week already we have managed to accommodate a last-minute test requirement for a customer and we are now pre-baking the chamber in preparation for a series of flight hardware bakeouts.

The chamber features:

PID controlled thermal plate with resistive heating and liquid channels for cooling either by chiller circulator or LN2
Cold trap with removable fascia for lab analysis if required
QCM for bakeout monitoring
Residual Gas Analyser (Hiden Analytical)
Standard 16 T-type thermocouple channels (more channels, or different TC types can be added with notice)
Temperature, pressure, QCM and RGA all logged digitally
Door seal and chamber wall fluid cooling lines for high temperature tests (>300°C)
Scroll pump and magnetically levitated turbo molecular pump meaning a completely oil-free pumping system

We also have a multi-part shroud under manufacture which will use the same resistive heating and fluid line design as the thermal plate. This is scheduled to be installed towards the end of the year when we tend to have more downtime for our test house facilities.

Update: Thermal Vacuum Chamber - TVAC#2

4/4/2018

The installation of our new thermal vacuum chamber is slightly behind schedule but we are still on track to start testing the vacuum and thermal control system at the end of this month. New custom flanges for the old gate valve port are in the final stages of fabrication and finishing, the scroll and mag-lev turbo molecular pumps are installed and the control systems for the thermal plate are starting testing the end of this week.

TVAC#2 has water cooled door seals and chamber walls which means it will be capable of higher maximum temperatures than TVAC#1. We are also installing a thermal plate design we developed for a customer several years ago to achieve a very uniform temperature when using LN2 for cold temperatures and dwells.

There are also further re-designs from the thermal system of TVAC#1 which will be tested in TVAC#2 and will be used to upgrade TVAC#1 in the future.

Follow this blog for future updates or keep an eye on our test house page for when TVAC#2 is fully operational.

TS-Space Systems in 2018

4/1/2018

And we're back for 2018!

We have recently taken delivery of a new vacuum chamber which we have already started work on getting it ready for commissioning. Some of the new pumps and control units have arrived and we are currently populating and wiring the control/measurement rack units. This new vacuum chamber system will be TVAC#2 and features water cooling on the chamber walls and, importantly, the door seals, which means it will be capable of higher temperature testing than TVAC#1.

We have used the down time of the chamber in the last few weeks of 2017 to further optimise the PID control for the thermal plate in TVAC#1 which means it is now capable of reaching temperature faster and with negligible overshoot. We continue to see a high demand for bakeouts on TVAC#1 and we are working quickly to get TVAC#2 up and running to help with this.

We continue to develop our solar simulators and have a couple of product enhancements planned for 2018 for both our standard Unisim close match range as well as our Unisim Compact. For a free in-house demonstration of our Unisim Compact, please feel free to contact us.

We hope you all had a good break over the Christmas holiday and look forward to working with you over the coming year.

A Closer Look At Our Test House

12/7/2017

As a small company we are remarkably agile in terms of design, manufacture and installation of test equipment for our in-house test services. This allows us to quickly respond to our customer's test requirements by getting custom components machined and fitted. For our customers, this quick turn around can mean the difference between meeting or missing a deadline.

Urgent Test Requirements

While we do not recommend working under such conditions, we are sometimes asked to help with urgent test requirements with little time to prepare.

We were recently contacted with very short notice for a thermal vacuum test requirement. Less than two weeks after receiving the test procedure document we had begun the test and, even with the chamber not being configured how we would have liked it and the test procedure being altered by the customer 'on-the-fly', the test was completed on schedule. The results of the test were critical to the acceptance of a flight component and as such the customer was able to meet their deadline due to our rapid response.

Large Sample Loads

A customer requirement for baking out hundreds of thermocouples meant pushing the capacity of our TVAC chamber. The down-time between bakeouts gave us a week to measure, design, manufacture, clean and fit spool system for loading the thermocouples. We were constrained by our temperature controlled shroud, but we were able to fit the components in time and complete the bakeout.

Tricky Sample Loading

Our chamber can be fitted with a large a range of temperature controlled shrouds we have manufactured for it. However, we are able to manufacture new shrouds to accommodate samples which are more tricky to mount.

For this particular bakeout the samples need to be suspended in the center of the chamber. We were able to get a design to our highly skilled engineer within the day and continued the re-configuring of the chamber while the machining was being undertaken. Computer controlled DC power supplies were installed into the control rig and the PID software updated to take care of the temperature control of the multi-segment shroud. In a week we had the new shroud installed along with re-routed thermocouples, QCM and cold plate lines. The bakeout was then started on-schedule thanks to our quick turnaround.

Test Quote Request Form

4/1/2017

Due to an increase in quote requests for our test services we have a new form for requesting quotes for vacuum testing which can be found here. Although we specialise in custom testing requirements, collating common test requirements using this initial form will help us get your quote out much faster.

We are also in the process of updating our standard outgassing test information to cover regular questions and problems we are asked regarding sample preparation. For our existing customers please note our outgassing charges will remain the same for 2017, so if you used us for your outgassing test work in 2016 and are looking to use us again in 2017, the prices are the same.

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