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Pfeiffer Vacuum celebrates the turbopump's 50th birthday
Pfeiffer Vacuum celebrates the turbopump's 50th birthday
In 2008, Pfeiffer Vacuum celebrates the turbopump's 50th birthday. It was 50 years ago that the turbopump was developed at Arthur Pfeiffer GmbH. the objective at that time was to generate a hydrocarbon-free vacuum. Today, turbopumps from Pfeiffer Vacuum are the very embodiment of high-tech products that are highly reliable and offer optimum performance data.

History
When Dr. Willi Becker took over as the head of the laboratory at Arthur Pfeiffer GmbH in 1945, he was interested in all of the possibilities for building pumps. He engineered new oil diffusion pumps, but his greatest challenge was to generate a vacuum that would be free of hydrocarbons. Becker succeeded in designing a baffle that significantly improved the operating principle of this pump through the combination of a rotating impeller and a stationary stator with axially-inverted blades. Air molecules can pass in the desired direction, but oil molecules cannot pass in the opposite direction. The rotating blades were designed in such a manner as to be optically tight in the axial direction. Becker found that this enabled a considerable pressure ratio to be generated at the molecular level. This effect was dependent upon the angle and spacing of the rotor blades on the disks. The obvious next step was to design a pump by interconnecting multiple disks in tandem. Although this design no longer required the dangerously narrow clearance between rotor and housing, it did display the physical properties of a molecular pump. The new pump was given the prefix "turbo" because its design incorporating rotors and stators was reminiscent of a turbine.

Regular production
1958 saw the commencement of regular production of the first turbomolecular pump, which achieved a pumping speed of 150 l/s and weighed 95 kg. Although 100 to 200 pumps were manufactured per year during the initial years, predominantly for universities and research institutions, their simple handling and pure vacuum opened up new fields of application in the analytical industry and in industrial process technology. The breathtaking pace of development of microelectronics and microchips, in particular, would not have been possible without turbopumps, which assure the required high vacuum under extreme conditions.

Ever smaller and better
Responding to the growing fields of application, Pfeiffer Vacuum steadily evolved the classical turbopump. The turbos were made smaller, more robust and more capable - without any change in their fundamental principle. In 1967, the original belt drive was replaced by an electronic drive. And in 1978, a miniature turbo that weighed only 3 kg, was the first to incorporate magnetic levitation, offered a pumping speed of 16 l/s and operated at a speed of 90,000 RPM was developed for NASA for use in space.

Today, Pfeiffer Vacuum offers a full line of turbopumps with various pumping speeds, in both conventional and magnetic levitation technology, including integrated drive.

Pfeiffer Vacuum, Germany (06/11/2009)
Mark NTL408-11