First Demo working -Tom Hanley Australia

[Tom Hanley]

Hi there from Oatlands , NSW, Australia: Looking to join the Plasma club.

If i may i would like to submit my son’s (Tom) demo fusor. He has wanted to build a demo for quite some time. It’s really hard to get hold of anything over here, we can’t even get a bell jar, and It’s taken about a year to scrounge the bits and pieces. Could you please have a look at it and see if it's worthy for the plasma club.

Specifications are:
• 15Kv/30ma CT NST, full wave rectified, no filtering and a 240V 15A variac.
• Vacuum is a CPS 2 stage 3 CFM pump, near new rated to 15 micron and CPS vacuum gauge .
• Voltage monitor is by a Fluke HV probe into an old Fluke DMM.
• Current monitor is by DMM across 10 Ohm /30W resistor.
• Body is aluminium plates, Perspex tube, vitron seals, approximately 70mm outer grid and 15mm inner grid of 1.6mm SS wire and an ignition lighter feed through hot glued in.

There are Pictures attached and Youtube links at the bottom. Where possible we noted the approximate Kv/mA metering . We should have taken some shots of plasma with the meters in the same frame but they haven’t got any backlight on them anyway. The voltage seemed stable under control of the variac but the current jumped about quite a bit, it may have been due to the crappy $5 DMM we used or other. Strangely enough there was no arching or sparkling , we must have cleaned if good.

Tom was quite fascinated at his first demo run, holding the camera, working the variac , looking at the current /voltage, then back to the plasma .
His demo was fashioned somewhat after what he saw on the Andrew Seltzman’s RTF Technologies website, “IEC Fusion Reactor, Mark 1”( around 2011) just because it looked so nice.

It outgases like crazy, as i expected, the pressure is way too high (probably around 500 microns) and the glow looks diffuse and is not that really nice sharp spherical shape in the grid centre. Since the inner grid is about 15mm the possier looks to be about 10mm . But i guess it’s not too bad for his first try at a demo model, and something to try to improve on.

The pictures are probably not the best he would have liked, some are under fluoro or natural light or in the dark. The old cameras auto focus don’t help much either. It’s much more appealing and a nicer colour to look at with the naked eye.

At the moment Tom is more interested in the best plasma shape and confinement he can get with air . We are just going to spend some time looking at it and enjoying what we see before moving on.

There is still a lot of FAQ for him to explore and we will be going to Disneyland (USA) early next year, so I really hope we can get some scrounging done at the same time.

Thanks
Any comments, advice, criticism are welcome.


You tube videos :
From 2/11/15
https://youtu.be/9sE-ZjNtuw0

from 11/11/15
https://youtu.be/Bvag5iwlS0k

from 11/11/15
https://youtu.be/E01UojaIAYo

[Steven Sesselmann]

Tom and Dad,

Great, nice demo fuser, well documented effort.

Nice to see another aussie fusioneer, if you need any advise or want to find out where to get things feel free to pm me, I'm in Sydney.

Steven

[Tom Hanley]

Very ( extremely) kind of you Steven , we may just take you up on that kind offer. There is a wealth of information on Fusor.net and sometimes its a bit bewildering.
We look and see what others are building and whats available in the USA and feel a bit disheartened ( i think its called eye candy). But we are going to persevere, one day maybe neutrons
I have an idea we are going to cross paths sometime in the future.
Regards

[Richard Hull]

Great little demo fusor! I have admitted Tom to the Plasma Club listing.

Richard Hull

[Tom Hanley]

Thanks very much Richard , today has been a good day. Firstly a contact from Steve and now from yourself. Tom is going to be so excited. Just the encouragement we need.

[Paul_Schatzkin]

Cool to see another outpost in OZ. Pretty plasma pix.