The levels of vacuum that proceed past the high vacuum range into the ultra high and then the extremely high vacuum range become more difficult to achieve each decade that a system progresses through. This paper will explore the difficulties and cover some of the design principles used in achieving vacuum levels in the low 10~(-12) torr pressure range. This system was entirely built with commercially-available off the shelf (COTS) components. This chamber was designed in 1998 to provide a very low outgassing environment for the processing and sealing of charge-coupled devices (CCD's) for some of the Hubble Space Telescope replacement optics.
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