Although on the Dichro page I said that these machines are called "vacuum vapor deposition systems", nobody actually calls them that.  Like a family pet, we have other endearing terms for these guys such as "evaporators", or just simply "coaters".  Below are a few pictures of our beloved coater.  I won't explain all of the details but if you are technically inclined you may enjoy these pictures.  Click on any picture to view a larger version.

This is the front of the vacuum chamber.  The unit stands about 7 feet tall.  The vacuum chamber itself is approximately 32 inches across.  Below the chamber is the pumping stack.  The little red thing on the left below the table top says "danger high voltage".  This translates to "sudden death" for you non-technical types.   I guess I should put the side panels back on!

This is the front of the system again with the front door open.  Here you can see some of the fun stuff inside.  Item #1 is a "dome" that holds the glass.  There are three of them in the system.  Each dome rotates and also the whole assembly revolves.  This is called a "double rotation planetary" system.  Item #2 are the heaters.  These are used to heat the glass to ~300° C.  Item #3 is a mask to block some of the coating from hitting the glass (for uniformity).  Item #4 is the shutter.  This opens to allow the coating to leave the source and subsequently deposit on the glass.  Item #5 is the electron beam gun.  More on this later...

Here is a top view of the electron beam gun.  The actual electron beam comes up thru the square hole.  There are powerful electromagnets that curve the beam around so that it hits whatever you want to evaporate.  You can see some of the stuff that we evaporate in the center of the picture.  This particular type of beam gun has 4 pockets to hold the stuff.  The pockets rotate under the top of the assembly so that only one pocket is visible at a time.  Looks like I should clean this thing one of these days.

We are now looking at the electron beam gun head on.  The two braided copper wires coming up from the bottom are the high voltage connections to the "emitter".  The emitter actually emits the electrons for the electron beam.  The four wires on the top of the gun are for the electromagnets that direct and focus the beam.  Think of the emitter as a 14,000 watt light bulb operating at 8,000 volts that emits all of its energy in a thin beam approximately 2mm wide and 10mm long.  This isn't exactly right, but it sounds good.

Here the electron beam is actually heating up some stuff and evaporating it.  This is a horrible picture but it is really hard to get a good picture thru the tiny peep hole in the front of the machine.  There is a filter in front of the camera.  Without this filter it is like looking directly into the sun.  That reminds me... Why do we use an electron beam?  Because you have to get this stuff to somewhere around 3000° C. before it will evaporate.  Believe it or not, using an electron beam is the easiest way to do this.

This is the control rack for the machine.  Lots of pretty lights.  Included here are vacuum gauges, valve/pump controllers, electron beam gun controllers, gas flow controllers, deposition monitor, etc.  You can't see it but there is a gigantic electron beam power supply to the left of this rack.  Maybe someday I'll take a picture of it.

Here is another really horrible picture.  These are pumps that create the vacuum.  The black thing is a mechanical pump to create a rough vacuum (~200 mTorr).  If you know what you are looking for you can almost see the diffusion pump that creates the high vacuum.  The curved beige corrugated tube that you see on the left side of the picture is attached to a wet/dry shop vac.  I'm still trying to figure out how to incorporate this into the system :-).

And finally here are some completed pieces of glass fresh out of the coater.  These happen to be Uroboros fibroid sheets destined to be Chinese character ornaments or maybe Moon Fronds.