Fusor Forums

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.
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

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

Looks like great progress Scott, best of luck.

Tom

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

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,

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

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

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

You guys are doing a fabulous job! Keep it up!

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

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

Fabulous!! Looks like a pro-system......And, I bet at a pro-price!!

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

Richard Hull

Very impressive; can't wait for you to get the system under vacuum and post your first plasma with that unit!

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

Looks great Scott. I noticed your MFC is plumbed in backwards. Does it work properly in reverse flow direction?

Jim is correct. Looks like an easily corrected (oops!) to me.

Richard Hull