Minerva’s evolution in low pressure capabilities

At Minerva, we made quite an evolution in low pressure capabilities.

A short fact list about Minerva:

• Founded in 1941 as a trading company, concentrated on car industry
• First activities in metrology in the 1960's
• Realization first lab in the 1970's accreditation in 1988
• 1997 liquid column                           2.500 Pa g
• 1999 conical piston gauge              40.000 Pa g
• 2007 FPG8601 implementation      15.000 Pa g and a

FPG8601 made it possible to enhance our calibration and measurement capabilities not only in gauge mode, but also in low absolute mode. The latter is often referred to as vacuum range.

FPG8601 has unmatched small measurement uncertainty, but as trade in, setting pressures is a realtively slow process.

During a risk evaluation both in respect to availability and turnaround time, it became clear an investment in additional transfer standards in the low absolute (vacuum) range would be expedient, but what instrument would be best?

The following functionality made it to the final wishlist:

• Self containing unit including turbo vacuum pumps and pressure control
• Multiple reference pressure transducers
• (RS232) Interface for data acquisition
• Built in zero reference possibility to correct for zero drift.

Medio 2022 we purchased an MKS PVS6E Portable Vacuum Calibration System which completely covers our wishlist and since then it is being used to calibrate:

• Vacuum reference pressure transducers for Fluke PG7601 / 2465A
• HVAC transducers
• Pirani gauges
• And many other instruments.

The PVS6E reduced the turnaround time for these type of transducers significantly and also normalized the workload on our valuable FPG8601. FPG8601 now is being used for high end calibrations only and naturally to assure traceability of the PVS6E.

Carel Adolfse
Technical Director
carel.adolfse@minerva-calibration.com