This Major Qualifying Project (MQP) involved the automation of a vacuum chamber used for testing optical instruments at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This system uses a LabVIEW program to control hardware and acquire data via a General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB). The purpose of the system is to control the pumps and other equipment required to pump down the vacuum chamber from atmospheric pressure to a high vacuum of approximately 1x10-5 torr. The program existing before this project had a fully automated mode, but it was not used due to its unreliability, and the manual fallback mode had serious problems as well. The result of this project is a reliable, fully automatic system with a very robust manual control program that can be used as a backup.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Gordon, Loren Craig
• Shear, Michael A.

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• 99A006M

Advisor

• Looft, Fred J.

Year

• 1999

Center

• Goddard Space Flight Center Project Center - MQP

Sponsor

• NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Date created

• 1999-01-01

Resource type

• Major Qualifying Project

Major

• Electrical Engineering

Rights statement

• In Copyright