The General Vacuum market is actually a number of discrete markets that utilize vacuum technology. Examples of applications are:

• The Analytical market including Mass Spectrometry which used in Drug discovery or any number of biomedical applications. There are a number of techniques using vacuum which all allow you to analyze the composition of an unknown sample.
• Leak detection which is many industries but is particularly heavily used in the automotive industry. Many key components from the gas tank to the AC system need to be Helium leak checked, a vacuum application, to assure the most efficient operation.
• Vacuum Metalizing, vacuum coating techniques can be used to put metallic films on many substrates that wouldn't be able to be coated using any other technique.
• Architectural Glass Coating, metallic films can be deposited using vacuum techniques on large sheets of glass used in commercial construction. These films can be for done for purely aesthetic reasons but often they can cut down on IR light transmitted through the glass saving energy and cost over the lifetime of the building.
• Electron Microscopy and Surface Analysis are used to support many different industries including Semiconductor, Aerospace and Metallurgy. Vacuum is used to enable electron beams to interact with the material that is to be analyzed.