A prototype of a new high temperature chamber has been developed at our institute. Like most of such chambers it has an evacuated housing which is watercooled, and in its center a tungsten heating strip is mounted on watercooled clamps (fig.1). A special way of clamping compensates for thermal expansion automatically and thus keeps the specimen in an aligned position. The specimen is mounted directly onto the heating strip's surface. Specimens are prepared using fine powders mixed with distilled water and acetone to give a thin slurry. This mixture is put onto the heating strip and carefully dried with a heatgun. This way of preparing a specimen makes it cling to the heating strip quite well even at temperatures above 3000K and therefore provides good thermal contact.