When you’re working with projects involving vacuum pumps, a vacuum gauge will show you the pressure in the chamber being evacuated. There are many different approaches to measuring the pressure in a vacuum, but we’ll focus on one of the most common, called the Bourdon pressure gauge.
At the heart of the Bourdon gauge is a C-shaped flattened tube that is connected to the chamber being evacuated. The removal of the air in the tube causes the tube to bend slightly, which moves a mechanism attached to the end of the tube. This mechanism amplifies and converts the bending motion into rotation, moving the pressure dial to indicate the pressure in the tube.
Different types of pressure gauges have different pressure ranges that they can measure. If you’re trying to reach a specific pressure, the following chart can help you find a gauge that can read that pressure.
