TS-Space Systems - Solar Simulators and Vacuum Testing

  • Home
  • About
    • Publications
  • News
  • Products
  • Test House
  • Contact

Latest Test House News

3/5/2019

 

FTIR Facility

We are very pleased to announce that our new FTIR facility is now available for analysing molecular contamination witness plates in accordance with ECSS-Q-ST-70-05C on site. With this we can now offer MOC plate processing on-site for bakeouts and TVAC testing (if required) which will reduce the time between pre-bake qualification of the chamber and beginning hardware bakeouts.

We also have an ATR module for the system which will serve our outgassing facility for analysis of any condensate deposited on the collection mirrors during testing (at customer request, of course).
Picture
Picture

Outgassing ESA Certification

Last year our outgassing facility took part in the inter-laboratory comparison for ECSS-Q-ST-70-02C and in March this year we were told to anticipate an ESA certification for our outgassing facility.

We have conducted outgassing testing for over 20 years and it is an increasingly popular test we are contracted to perform. The impending ESA certification of our outgassing laboratory  is a testimony to the diligence and skill of the facility manager, Sue.

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.
Picture
Picture

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.
Picture
Picture

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.
Picture

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.
Picture

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.
Picture

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.

    TS-Space Systems News

    Categories

    All
    Aerospace Test House
    Close Match Spectrum
    Covid-19
    ECSS-Q-70-04A
    ECSS-Q-ST-70-01
    ECSS-Q-ST-70-05C
    FTIR
    GDPR
    IV Measurement
    LED Solar Simulator
    Light Sources
    Lockdown
    Low Cost Solar Simulators
    Made In Britain
    Manufacturing
    Multijunction Solar Cells
    News
    Offgassing Testing
    Opening Hours
    Outgassing Testing
    Solar Simulator Demonstration
    Solar Simulator Faq
    Solar Simulators
    Test Facilities
    Unisim Compact
    Unsim Solar Simulator
    Vacuum Bakeout
    Vacuum Chambers
    Website Policies

    Archives

    January 2022
    December 2021
    April 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    August 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    April 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed

Company

About
Products
Services

Support

Contact
Guide to Simulators
Cookie Policy
Privacy Policy
​
Terms and Conditions
Picture
© COPYRIGHT 2020. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.