Design Automation of a Vacuum Chamber : Creating Rules for Configurator

The report is a degree project for the bachelor's level in Mechanical Engineering atUppsala University. The thesis was carried out at Scienta Omicron AB in Uppsala,Sweden and it is provided a basis determining rules for a vacuum chamberconfigurator that will be used by Scienta Omicron AB.Scienta Omicron AB wants to automate its vacuum chamber design to increasecompany productivity and profitability within this product line. This degree projectdescribes a basis for a configurator that will be used by the company later.This degree project begins by interviewing Scienta Omicron's R&D manager and theDesign Team to understand the company's needs and the reasons behind the desireto change the company's current process. After discussion with the company, aproject plan for the thesis is established to ensure that all parts of the thesis areperformed in time with good quality.The report presents briefly the theory of vacuum technology, especially regardingultra-high vacuum that is used by Scienta Omicron and several methods are used toachieve the project. The report ends with recommendations for Scienta Omicronwith the intention of continuously improving the result of this thesis i.e. implementingthe new process.An intensive study of vacuum chambers manufactured by the company is carried outby reviewing the company's email conversation between the design department andcustomers as well as chamber drawings in order to understand the design conceptand its limitations.As a part of the project, a requirement specification of the thesis has beendetermined and concept generating performed, resulting in two concepts," clashmodels" and" matrix". These enable the design and implementation of a vacuumchamber configurator by an external company specializing in customer productconfiguration.The chosen concept is clash models because it facilitates the implementation of theconfigurator later. A third-party company, Animech, which will implement the rulesdetermined in this thesis when constructing the configurator which will be used bySOAB. The configurator will be a tool that replaces the design team and gives themtime resources to develop new solutions and products