I think the gas pressure must have just been too high allowing the more energetic ions to jump the ion trap and start a self sustaining plasma fire in the main part of the chamber. The whole chamber was lit up with the plasma. It's probably pretty clean now. I could see a purple jet from the plasma chamber into the LL chamber.
Most of the heating happened inside the turbopump. The fire only quenched when I flooded the chamber with nitrogen. Exhaust smells like burning semiconductor!
It's a shame I couldn't recover the chamber pressure without venting I would have liked to have seen what came of that. Maybe I can try to recreate the conditions tomorrow. The trouble is that hydorgen pumps very poorly and pumping speed scales non-linearly with pressure so it is a bastard to balance.
Chamber should be still clean. See what pressure is at tomorrow.
Plasma Jockey, signing out...
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