====== Roughing Pumps ======
Kathryn McGill 03/2014

In utility corridor B0069, we run three roughing pumps to maintain house vacuum in PSB labs B35 & B60.

**Maintenance**: Once per month, check the oil level in the pumps; refill the oil as necessary.  (Make sure to close all house vacuum valves before turning off the roughing pump to change/refill the oil.  You can buy mechanical pump oil in the Physics Stock Room.)  If you need to drain old oil, place it in a bottle labeled "Waste Oil Only - No Solvents".  When it is full, contact EH&S to pick it up.

**Repair**:  We have one spare roughing pump (currently located in PSB B60).  When a pump fails (and hopefully only one fails at time!), replace it with the spare.  Most of the time, the broken pump just needs to be rebuilt.  (In the event of catastrophic failure, buy a new pump.)  If you're up to it, you can buy roughing pump repair kits and rebuild the pump yourself.  However, sending the pump out for repair is incredibly easy since Cornell currently has a contract with Nandor (www.nandor.com), a vacuum pump repair company.  This means that (1) we get an institutional discount that has already been negotiated for us and (2) Nandor periodically comes to campus to pick up broken pumps and return fixed pumps.  You can contact Nandor at info@nandor.com.  (In the past, Mark Rutt, mrutt@nandor.com has been the correspondent.).  To prepare the pump for pickup, you need to drain all of the oil and plug all holes.  You also need to include a Declaration of Decontamination; see Nandor's website for more details.

**Useful Info**: [[http://blog.restek.com/?p=6349/|On Oil Level]]; [[http://blog.restek.com/?p=7614|On Oil Color]]; [[http://blog.restek.com/?p=8053|On Ballast]]