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Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sat Dec 05, 2015 12:45 pm
by Scott Moroch
Over the next several months Jack and I will be upgrading our fusor to a 9" ID spherical chamber. We hope to detail our efforts on this thread. We had a lot of success in our smaller KF 50 fusor, however certain aspects of the design made it very difficult to collect data and sustain stable fusion. After reaching out to Huntington Mechanical Labs, they offered to donate a custom-made spherical chamber. This chamber is going to be used for a variety of different experiments, including ion sources.

I have attached images of the CAD designs of our chamber and hopefully within the next 1-2 months I will add additional pictures to this thread detailing our efforts. Certain components such as our vacuum system and high voltage power supply will remain the same, however we plan to add a mass flow controller for better control of gas flow in the chamber.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2015 5:57 pm
by Andrew Robinson
Nice job Scott. Little concerned about some of your CAD. some of your ports are awfully close to your chamber. Remember, with CAD, it's really important to account for all parts in your assembly, not just the main pieces. Add everything you can which will help you spot problems before you spend a lot of money. In addition, it is also even more important to be sure your chamber can be assembled mechanically. Its easy to make these mistakes in CAD. This is why for example, some batteries in cars are very difficult to replace, or in a few hilarious oops, impossible to remove without disassembling part of the car. Visit a hardware supplier such as McMaster-Carr and download the required CAD hardware for your assembly. Make sure you have enough clearance for everything and if possible use your softwares built in motion analysis for bolt placements (if available).

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2015 6:14 pm
by Scott Moroch
Andrew,

Thanks for the response and your insight. This is the final design as far as port placement however the person at the company is going to adjust the CAD to have all ports thru-hole and mounted with suffecient clearance to allow enough room for me to easily tighten the bolt and nut. He told me that this is something incredibly common and is done all of the time for customers of Huntington. All in all the chamber is:

7-2.75" ports (for gas line, TC gauge, ion gauge, high voltage feedthrough)
2-4.5" ports (one for a viewport and one to be blanked off)
1-1.33" port
1-6" port

The ports have been arranged in such a way to be used for a variety of experiments. 8 of the ports are placed on a diagonal for ion source experimentation.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sun Dec 06, 2015 6:28 pm
by Andrew Robinson
Glad to hear you have someone watching out. Not everyone is that attentive and others will just build to specification. Food for thought in the future. Looks like you guys have a bright CAD future too. Cheers

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2015 2:01 pm
by Richard Hull
Ports real close to the chamber are usually tapped Conflats. I have zero clearance on my HV conflat. I actually turned the back face to make the weldment lip for insertion to the sphere. All planned, of course. If you do all your own machine work and welding you can do stuff like this at zero dollars out of pocket.

In my design FAQs related to fusor construction, I advise about careful pre-design test fitting of components prior to palcement and welding.

Richard Hull

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2015 3:30 pm
by Andrew Robinson
Very true, I had considered that, but opted not to update post. Even with tapped flanges, still a god idea to get everything modeled properly. Bolts could be too long. Still applies in either case. I have been working up a nice FAQ on CAD based design, pros, cons, etc for several months now. Need to finish it off and get it posted.

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 12:37 pm
by John Futter
Tapped flanges are a disaster in waiting especially for hobbyists.
It is unlikely that the hobbyist will buy the correct silver plated SS bolts that reduce galling / thread pickup
Unless absolutely necessary all flanges should be through hole to avoid this problem.
Having had to have a snapped bolt spark eroded out and a 6"CF cube re-machined to fit a helicoil for that one bolt is time consuming and expensive

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 12:46 pm
by Andrew Robinson
Yes I agree entirely. I hate the idea of tapped flanges. The chamber is the last place I would want to use them too. Not as easy of a replacement/fix as other components. Non issue here ofcourse since Scott mentioned that the CAD does not reflect the final product in terms port clearance.

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2016 5:45 pm
by Scott Moroch
I have attached another rendering the chamber that was done at the company for me this time. As I work on my CAD skills both in school and at home I hope to incorporate more CAD renderings into my projects. More progress on Fusor Mk. II will come within the next couple of months. Jack and I hope to have the system up and running in the Spring.

Also, please note, the ports do appear close to the chamber however this has been changed. All ports will be mounted as thru-hole and further from the chamber.
Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2016 1:03 am
by Scott Moroch
Jack and I are continuing to make progress on our Fusor Mk. II design. Recently we obtained a BTI bubble detector which we intend to use for more accurate neutron measurements. The company finished the manufacturing drawings for the chamber and I have attached images of the most recent CAD renderings. In addition, this weekend Jack will be attending the MIT flea market where we hope he will find/ buy all of the final conflat components we need for our chamber.

For this fusor we are currently working on designing and constructing a reactor chassis out of aluminum extrusions 20mm by 20mm. The goal of building this chassis to have one complete, unified and compact containment for the fusor. I hope to post some designs on this shortly. The extrusions themselves will be purchased from Misumi: http://us.misumi-ec.com/vona2/detail/11 ... 0-1524-RTP

The brackets and connectors will be fabricated on a CNC machine in order to reduce cost.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sat Apr 16, 2016 2:43 am
by Andrew Robinson
Your progress is looking great guys! Wise choice to go with Al extrusions too. Will give your setup a real edge over the competition as the extrusions will aid in hook up and modularity. We use "80/20" exclusively for all our experimental setups as it really makes adding new parts and shifting around designs a cake walk. They are a bit pricey, but also a very common extrusion choice with tons of features and other add ons. You may give them a look before making your purchasing decision.
80/20 example
80/20 example
Now granted in that photo, some of those components are custom, but the rail and joining plates are stock. You will be able to get standard caster plates, hinges, doors, cable supports, the works. Check them out as an option.

Keep up the great work! Looking forward to seeing more progress as well as seeing you both again this fall.

Cheers,
Andrew

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Thu May 19, 2016 5:24 pm
by Scott Moroch
Jack and I have been making steady progress on our Fusor II. Although our first fusor was successful, our goal was to build a system that can be used for research/experiments. Therefore, the goal of this system is to achieve an isotropic neutron output of several hundred thousand n/s and maintain stable fusion/plasma discharge. To achieve this we will be using a larger chamber, as already noted, and a mass flow controller to maintain a stable pressure.

We hope/plan on achieving first fusion in this system at the end of June. Stay tuned.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sat May 21, 2016 1:33 pm
by Tom McCarthy
Looks like great progress Scott, best of luck.

Tom

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sun May 22, 2016 12:05 am
by Richard Hull
Keep plugin' guys! The second pass is always vastly more successful. My fusor III was run for 5 years doing fusion, but it never really went much over 200k n/s isotropic. It wasn't until early 2004 that fusor IV was built and quickly raced to the megamark. I was a lot smarter and more inventive having seen all the mistakes and wrong design issues that fusor III embodied. This allowed fusor IV to be free of those issues.

Rare indeed is the fusioneer that builds a completely new, second machine. Most who succeed just do it and never take the system that they built to any useful level. They are not heard from again. You guys are different. All the best of luck in the second pass.

Richard Hull

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 10:51 am
by JuanDosio
What exactly are the new ports intended for if you don't mind me asking? i've been looking into better data acquisition lately and i could use a hint on what exactly is important to watch out for besides the regular pressure and current sensors,

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Sat May 28, 2016 3:45 pm
by Scott Moroch
Juan Dosio,

This chamber is going to have a total of 13 conflat ports. Our previous fusor only had 5. I believe 5 ports is the minimum as we had one for each of the following: vacuum pumping port, deuterium inlet, vacuum metering (TC gauge), viewport, and high voltage feedthrough. This chamber was designed to be used as a research grade fusor for many experiments. We plan to use ports for the following:

1) High voltage
2) vacuum pumping port
3) viewport
4) possibly a second viewport for a different viewing angle
5) Thermocouple gauge
6) ion gauge
7) deuterium inlet

The other ports will be blanked off for the initial runs however we are soon going to be conducting an experiment that involves a rotary feedthrough and other experiments that may involve additional high voltage feedthroughs.

The chamber is designed with 2 sets of 2 diagonal CF 2.75" ports. We plan to use these for 2-4 ion source/guns in the the future. Therefore, with a greater number of ports comes a greater number of experiments that I can run. I also plan to use this chamber for other projects in the future such as a Beam on Target accelerator system.

Hope this helps.

Scott

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Fri Jun 03, 2016 5:17 pm
by Scott Moroch
Current picture of chamber is attached below. Right now it is a bunch of Stainless Steel components/flanges (you can see the hemispheres in particular). Hopefully by the end of this month it will be a complete UHV Spherical chamber ready for a new round of fusion experiments.

I will continue to keep this thread going. Won't be long until we have some pretty plasma pictures to share.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:05 pm
by Scott Moroch
More progress on the construction of the chamber has been made. Picture has been attached. It looks like we are getting closer and closer everyday. We have a few more items to buy before first plasma, but we think first light is just around the corner. We are still contemplating using aluminum extrusions. It is a more expensive option but will certainly give our system a more professional look as well as make it easy to organize all of our equipment.

Keep checking this thread for more updates soon.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Tue Jun 14, 2016 8:32 pm
by Andrew Robinson
You guys are doing a fabulous job! Keep it up!

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2016 7:09 pm
by Scott Moroch
The chamber has been completed! A picture of the electropolished UHV chamber (along with the Huntington Logo) is attached. Plasma and fusion is just around the corner.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Mon Jul 18, 2016 10:25 pm
by Scott Moroch
The UHV chamber that we will be using for our next round of fusion experiments arrived today. I have attached many pictures of the chamber as well as a picture of our feedthrough/grid assembly and the fitting adapter for our diffusion pump. We are hoping to have fusion by plasma and fusion by next week.

Thanks for following our progress.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 4:21 am
by Richard Hull
Fabulous!! Looks like a pro-system......And, I bet at a pro-price!!

Fine, finished work like that, ain't cheap.

Richard Hull

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Wed Jul 20, 2016 8:53 am
by Dennis P Brown
Very impressive; can't wait for you to get the system under vacuum and post your first plasma with that unit!

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 6:09 pm
by Scott Moroch
More pictures of our progress attached below. We are currently tracking down a bad leak that we think is in the foreline. After that is resolved, fusion should be soon.

Scott Moroch

Re: Fusor Mk. II

Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 1:34 pm
by Jim Stead
Looks great Scott. I noticed your MFC is plumbed in backwards. Does it work properly in reverse flow direction?