  We report on a simple oven-loaded magneto-optical trap (MOT) apparatus for
the creation of both molecular Bose-Einstein condensates (mBEC) and degenerate
Fermi gases (DFGs) of lithium. The apparatus does not require a Zeeman slower
or a 2D MOT nor does it require any separation or differential pumping between
the effusive atom source and the science chamber. The result is an exceedingly
simple, inexpensive, and compact vacuum system ideal for miniaturization. We
discuss our work in the context of other realizations of quantum degenerate
gases by evaporation in optical dipole traps and illustrate that our apparatus
meets the key requirements of atom number and trap lifetime. We also
demonstrate with this system the production of a mBEC, and we use it to observe
the pairing gap of a strongly interacting two-component DFG in the BEC-BCS
crossover regime.
