What does your Budget look like?

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Psalia
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Joined: Sat Jul 23, 2016 4:48 pm
Real name: Saila Ptolemy

What does your Budget look like?

Post by Psalia »

Hello everyone,

I have saved up a few nuts and am finally ready to spend them. And so i have started to make a budget of every part i will need. Although i have a pretty good idea of most of the components in an average fusor, i don't believe i can properly account for every nut and bolt i will need ahead of time and was wondering if any of you may have a budget of your own you might be willing to share. Any crude list of items will do to be honest, i do realize most of you pride yourself in the "hunt'' for times however i don't have much experience in this department and any assistance would be nice.

Thank you ahead of time for any of you that are willing to share your budget.

-Ptolemy
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Richard Hull
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Richard Hull »

Any problem reading the FAQs here in the forum?? We can't spoon feed you here. Self directed use of the materials laid out before you here is expected.

I will relent from the usual venom I offer for the lazy. I spent a lot of time doing just this sort of thing in the following FAQ.

viewtopic.php?f=24&t=9072

Nick Peskosky has a fabulous accounting of his super system budget within the above FAQ stream.

Read, read, read before posting on things covered in the FAQs.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Psalia
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Real name: Saila Ptolemy

Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Psalia »

Amusingly enough i had read that same FAQ a few weeks ago, i just didn't bother to read every post on the thread. I fully understand your policy on asking questions, however i don't think your usual go to " oh he's new, read the FAQ!! " applies to every case. i had even done an extensive search of the forums through the search bar but failed to find the word " budget " in the right context, as you might imagine it is a very commonly used word here. i am sure many would agree that it would have been a very tough conversation to find had you not had previous knowledge of it. I thank you for your help in finding such a useful source, however it seems to be locked for some reason. When i click on the link i am prompted a message that tells me i do not have adequate privileges to see the post, let me know if there is another way of reading the budget. I myself am working on a comprehensive excel budget that i will also post when i finish.

-Ptolemy
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Richard Hull
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Richard Hull »

Budgets, as noted in my original post, are just not reliable as one man's budget of $1200.00 comes from his owning a complete machine shop/welding gear and experience in using all of them, coupled with a heavily stocked, junk box of usable vacuum gear and electronics, while another man's budget of $3450.00 comes from good scrounging skills and a complete vacuum system already in place and he knows electronics, while yet another man is well heeled and will buy everything from scratch and have all his machine work done by Lesker with a list of parts and labor budget of $17,600. All will do fusion. Their budgets are no guide for a impoverished newbie with no electronics experience and little knowledge of physics, radiation measurement or vacuum technique, who has a hammer and a hand drill as his only tools with five thumbs on each hand.

Budgets are unreliable and seem to never cover it all nor are they realistic for the average would-be fusioneer. Based on what you arrive with, (experience, knowledge, parts already in hand, tools, skills, etc.), there could be a useful 80-100 completely different budgets offered up, each of which would be real close to what you need to spend based on where you are at the outset of the effort.

Example: Nick's budget would stop most dead in their tracks, (5 kilobucks plus), and Nick is very familiar with a good bit of the technology and had a pretty fair junk bin to draw from. Still he admits to wasting time and money buying things, (Not in his budget!), that were not right or would cost too much to adapt. We see failed fusor attempts show up in our trading post as folks divest themselves of material that was purchased in the failed effort and are now "moving on". It just got to be too much in time, effort and money that was never foreseen....budget or no budget.

Same thing for requests from newbies for published plans. They really do not exist. If plans did exist, some part called out would not be avaialble or you would have to do a work around in a manner that might foil the plan's original critical need.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Rex Allers
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Location: San Jose CA

Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Rex Allers »

Richard, I agree with everything you say about the wide variability of budgets.

But I think you missed one of Ptolemy's points about the FAQ thread when he said,
"When i click on the link i am prompted a message that tells me i do not have adequate privileges to see the post, let me know if there is another way of reading the budget."

This is in reference to Nick's post in the FAQ thread where he says, "Linking this FAQ to my cost breakdown thread:". I tried the link and I get the same error message.

I did a search on all of Nick's posts in the mid-2015 range and I don't see anything besides what is in the cost thread that might contain the cost breakdown. I see his post on June 19 that he is working on it and the next related post is Jul 30 -- it's the one in the FAQ with the link that doesn't work.

Not sure how fixable it is, just pointing out that something did go wrong with that link in the FAQ.
Rex Allers
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Richard Hull
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Richard Hull »

Try this link. The post is now hidden in the very bottom forum. Pre 2015 admin stuff. Why this was done I do not know. It is listed as hidden!!

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10858

The "update and streamlining" of the forums, as you know, killed a number of things that have now been fixed backwards to work again.
I can reach it from the above link. You will need XL to veiw Nick's costs.

Note: the link in the original FAQ worked for me!! However I am an admin and am using an ancient XP browser. (refuse to leave XP) Maybe browser related???

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Rex Allers
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Location: San Jose CA

Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Rex Allers »

Still no-go on that alternate link. I get this:
Information
You are not authorised to read this forum.

Forum admin can't be much fun, especially once a forum gets big, also gets migrated to new software, and has major sections rearranged.

Edit:
Maybe it wouldn't hurt to create yourself a new alternate user ID you can log into with normal minimum privileges, as a test method.

Oh, btw, this machine I use for most of my day-to-day browsing and work is still running XP too. I have a new super-PC running Win 8 and I bought another copy of 8 for this one that I will probably migrate to eventually. Recreating everything (apps, data) will probably be a minimum 2 week, unpleasant task. So, I can relate.
Rex Allers
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Richard Hull
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Richard Hull »

I will have the mpre experienced among us look at this issue.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
JuanDosio
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Real name: Juan Dosio

Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by JuanDosio »

Richard,
I also agree with your point on the value of a budget; however i think there is something to learn from each person's budget. if looked at carefully one can often find useful information on someones fusor and their way of building it. sometimes specific parts don't need to be high budget and other do, or one can perhaps learn about specific vendors. for example many people prefer to get their regulators from Matheson, while some just get everything vacuum related from lesker. these tiny tweaks can often make the difference between an experienced scrounger and a not so adept one. This i suspect, is why Nick ever bothered to make the budget in the first place.

-Dosio
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Richard Hull
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Richard Hull »

Juan, were you able to get the link to work for you? Did you get the XL listing of Nick's budget? This is very important.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
Frank Sanns
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Frank Sanns »

The original post was in the Administrative Section. Old announcements and posts were archived out of the normal forum to keep it current.

I have located a copy in the Fusor Construction forum and bumped it to the top. You can also find it at the following link.

Richard, I updated your links so it is the one below.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10858
Achiever's madness; when enough is still not enough. ---FS
We have to stop looking at the world through our physical eyes. The universe is NOT what we see. It is the quantum world that is real. The rest is just an electron illusion. ---FS
Rex Allers
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Rex Allers »

Richard, I just tried again and all versions of the link to Nick's post seem to be working for me now.
Rex Allers
JuanDosio
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Real name: Juan Dosio

Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by JuanDosio »

Yes i am currently able to open the link, i should also note i was not able to before.
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Richard Hull
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Richard Hull »

I am glad this got resolved. Thanks are owed to Frank for his prompt attention as a fellow valued admin.

As an admin, I clean out the garbage and am a watchdog. Frank, as an admin, straightens out the kinks in the system to keep it humming.
I will erase the admin thread regarding this issue in that forum after a day or two. Such short admin issues on specific kinks need not remain in that forum.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Nick Peskosky
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Re: What does your Budget look like?

Post by Nick Peskosky »

Glad to hear my cost tabulation is still making its rounds. Feel free to ask any questions about ballpark figures as I still follow numerous eBay/liquidation site lists and have a fairly good handle on the going rates for different types of Fusor subsystems.
Nick Peskosky
NPeskosky@gmail.com

"The whole of science is nothing more than the refinement of everyday thinking." - Albert Einstein
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