A High-Vacuum Controller for an Eventual Electron Microscope

[Chris Doble] has high ambitions: he’s making his own scanning-electron microscope, and as the first step he’s built a high-vacuum system. This required its own controller to manage the various electronics involved in the system, which he’s documented and open-sourced . The vacuum system itself starts with a rotary-vane roughing pump, which can bring a chamber down from atmospheric pressure to about 10 -3 millibar.