Leak Testing

We specialize in leak testing to ensure your chambers stay up and running

Leak Test Services

Redline Chambers offers maintenance and repairs for all major brands of Helium Leak Detectors (electronics included), Vacuum Pumps and Turbo Pumps. If you are in need of these services, please contact us for an evaluation discussion of your unit. We are able to service your components onsite or sent to us in our service department to give you options of convenience and turnaround as needed.  With our broad range of service solutions, we offer support for your vacuum and leak testing needs. Our experienced service department is committed to providing reliable first-class options for all of your company’s needs.

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Helium Leak testing: The preferred choice

Helium is the best tracer gas for many reasons. Helium is an inert gas, is not flammable, and non-toxic. The helium atom is tiny and will pass through the most minor leaks and can be detected by mass spectrometers.

Helium Leak detection

Helium leak detection is a process used to measure the size of cracks, holes, and leaks in the product or system being tested. A leak detector (also known as a mass spectrometer or MSLD) is used to conduct the testing. The Mass Spectrometer pumps out the atmosphere in the test piece or the vacuum chamber, creating negative pressure. After introducing the helium to the test piece, the tracer gas will travel through the imperfection, and the leak detector will read the size of the leak.

Helium Leak Detection Applications

Production parts and assemblies using helium leak detectors can help ensure the integrity of your production process.

Examples include hermetically sealed packages, valves, manifolds, seals, vacuum vessels & systems, medical devices, high purity piping, brake lines, fuel lines, hydraulic lines, refrigeration assemblies, radiators, heat exchangers, condensers, and storage tanks.

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Types of Leaks

  • Leaks in detachable connections: Flanges, machined mated surfaces, doors.
  • Leaks in permanent connections: Welding seams, glued joints.
  • Leaks due to porosity: Weld joints, bent joints, Rubber seal imperfections, or glued seam.
  • Thermal leaks: Material warpage from sealing surface, material decay from thermal induction.
  • Virtual leaks: Gas under vacuum that is liberated from hollows and cavities inside parts, blind holes, and joints, liquids in a vacuum.
  • Indirect leaks: leaking supply lines in vacuum systems or furnaces.
  • Serial leaks: This is the leak at the end of several “spaces connected in series” (e.g., a leak in the oil-filled section of the oil pan in a rotary vane pump).
  • One-way leaks: these will allow gases to pass in one direction but are tight in the other direction (very seldom). An area that is not gas-tight but not leaky in the sense that a defect is present.
  • Permeation: gas that passes through and is absorbed into materials such as rubber O-ring seals in a vacuum system.

System Maintenance

Industrial process tools that use vacuum systems or pressure systems must be tested to check for occasional leaks. This can be part of preventative maintenance or in the event of an unexpected failure.

Examples of vacuum systems include vacuum furnaces, vacuum coaters, electron microscopes, glove boxes, linear accelerators, electron beam and ion beam process equipment, semiconductor process equipment, laser process equipment.

Examples of pressurized systems include Power plants, gas handling systems, bioreactors, liquid gas facilities, underground tanks, underground cables, and pipes.

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Quality Guaranteed

Thanks to our new thermal vacuum chamber from Redline Chambers, we can expand our in-house testing capabilities and move faster from prototype to flight-qualified satellites. The chamber allows us to reproduce the most extreme environments anywhere on the surface of Earth, and in space!”

Benjamin Longmier

CTO and Co-Founder, Swarm Technologies