First time purging help

I've scoured the internet as well as this forum and I haven't been able to locate a complete guide on how this process goes down. I have a 7 cfm vacuum pump and I'm waiting for the desiccator to come in from amazon. I've also gotten 3/8" and 1/4" tubing incase it was needed. My question is how does the whole process go? And what exactly is the gauge for? Any help regarding this is greatly appreciated

The gauge tees into the vacuum line from the pump, to the desiccator, to keep track of internal chamber pressure.

We like to vacuum purge at 115F and -29.9"Hg, for best retained carboxylic acid forms.

so do you pull a vacuum, then close a ball valve and hold the vacuum in??? or does it constantly stay running by constantly removing air/moisture from the desiccator?

You only have to run the pump periodically to maintain vacuum with the ball valve closed.

my advice:

use good quality trim.

spray into a dish, and let that sit out in room temperature, ( a fan blowing over dish helps speed up evap) once at room temp, and bubbly, and not runny, scrape onto parchment paper.

try to scrape all oil onto one area on the parchment, not spreading it around too much..

with no heat, vacuum oil on parchment paper to full vacuum over and over till you achieve a solid puffy ball.. ( this takes me many vacs and de vacs to achieve this) ( also, many times, ball becomes to big, so you have to kill vacuum, thats ok, de vac, and re vac over and over the ball will eventually get smaller.. )

once ball is solid, heat down at full vac like fadedawg mentioned..

you should achieve a nice purged oil within 3-20 hours or so, depending on how far you want to purge, and what material is used..