Scroll pump noise reduction

[Nick Bulloss]

Our microprobe is in a very nice lab space, with one major exception - we cannot house the scroll pump outside the room. The pump is quite noisy so I'm planning on building a housing to reduce the noise. My question to the group is what material(s) would you recommend to line the box to deaden the pump sound? I should add - this will be done on a tight budget!
Thanks,
Nick

[Probeman]

Our microprobe is in a very nice lab space, with one major exception - we cannot house the scroll pump outside the room. The pump is quite noisy so I'm planning on building a housing to reduce the noise. My question to the group is what material(s) would you recommend to line the box to deaden the pump sound? I should add - this will be done on a tight budget!

Hi Nick,
I don't know what others use, but we were lucky enough to be able to design separate galleries for the pumps and chillers in our Lokey Lab rooms, and we used this composite foam material for the 12" x 12" "pass through" access ports in the theater grade acoustic walls between the instruments and the pumps/chillers as seen in this post (the last attachment):

http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=332.msg3476#msg3476

It's fire resistant and can be cut easily.  I think it's used for sound deadening in truck engine compartments.
john

[BenjaminWade]

Hi Nick
I feel your pain, I too am forced to have the scroll pump in the same room. I thought about a quiet cover for it, but ended up purchasing the silencer kit for the triscroll 300/600. I think it was ~$400-500 USD, so not sure if that is within your budget or not though. You could probably build your own for much cheaper.

Cheers

[jon_wade]

we just repurposed an old table, boxed it in with powder coated ally, lined it with a half inch sound deadening foam with the front panel on magnets.  The pump also sits on a foam block which may help vibration (may, as I didn't measure it before)

One thing - it gets hot, so it needs an airflow through the box.  I've tapped into the room extract to pull air thru the box which seems to do the trick. 
Its a *huge* improvement  - the fans on the machine are now the noisy bit.  it was less than 150 quid (thats, what, €2.20 in real money?) barring the arm and leg that my workshop charged me for cutting up the aluminium.

[Anette von der Handt]

Hi,

I just stumbled over this product. Didn't try it, no affiliation with the company but maybe it is of interest for someone who doesn't feel so DIY (and so pretty in blue):

Acoustic enclosures:
https://ravescientific.com/acoustical-electron-microscope-enclosures

[sem-geologist]

We have the same problem which we are going to solve soon by getting rid of Varian triscroll 600 and replacing it with Edwards nXDS 15, which is whole 15 dB lower than Triscroll 600. I already had a trial, at which the electronics of SXFiveFE is louder than primary pump (that Edwards on).

[Changkun]

I had the same problem before.
There are a normal SEM, a low vacuum FE-SEM, and a FE-EPMA in a room, additionally we have three water chillers, 5 rotary pumps (2, 2, and 1 for FE-EPMA, FE-SEM, and normal SEM, respectively), three UPSs, and two air conditioners in the same room.
It was so noisy, especially RPs and one old water chiller for normal SEM.
Acoustic enclosures found in internet were expensive and overqualified.
A local soundproofing company made enclosures for me and they work very well.
Now the most noisy one is UPS.

One thing you should consider is the enough space and ventilation of the enclosures.

Changkun