A 28 cm, cubical, aluminum vacuum chamber developed to produce thin, accelerator-beam targets for nuclear physics experiments. Beam targets of many different isotopes were normally produced by vacuum evaporation of the desired material (often only a few micrograms of a rare isotope) from a heated tungsten or graphite crucible on to ultra-thin sheets of VYNS (polyvinyl chloride-acetate copolymer). This chamber, made from welded 1 cm thick plates, would be mounted on a high-vacuum pump. The side facing the vacuum pump was fitted with two high-current feed-throughs which then heated, through resistive heating, the crucible to the required evaporation temperature. Two of the faces of the chamber were filled with manipulators that could position the targets within the chamber and two more were fitted with removable glass windows that would permit observation of the process and the correct positioning of the targets. One face of the chamber remained solid. The windows usually required removal for cleaning between operations.
