[Cao]
After Jon's comment yesterday that some of the connection did not seem to have good metal-metal contact, in particular the gate valve connection, I went through the ConFlat connections today and retighten them.
I found a lot of the CF connections are not particularly tightened and there were a lot of range left that can be tightened with the wrench. After re-tightening, the copper gaskets are not visible anymore. For example, see the attached images for the difference before and after tightening.
Note for future installation of CF
- After tightening the bolts/ screws in jumping order (to provide uniform torque) and there is resistance appearing in further tightening, start going through each screw/ bolts in a direction, each time applying a small torque until it resists to further tightened
- After each time going all the bolts/ screw and returning to the starting point, one will find they can further tighten the screws/ bolts. Repeat the process until no further tightening can be achieved
- The copper gasket should not be clearly visible at the connection
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