My first plasma chamber

[Frank Sanns]

There is much effort that goes into making a neutron producing fusor. Getting into the plasma club a far simpler.

Here is a picture of my first plasma chamber. It was stuffed in an old box when I cleaned out my parents house. I made this chamber when I was 12 years old. That puts me into the plasma club in 1968. Ouch!

The chamber was made from a piece of Pyrex lab drain pipe. The end caps were rubber stoppers with a nail for a feedthrough in each. They both had aluminum plate electrodes either directly attached or by a piece of scrap wire. There was a short length of glass tubing as the vacuum port.

For the power supply, I used an old vairac and transformer that dad had around. I had experimented with transformers previously and found one that shot a spark across a quarter to half in gap. That became my plasma power supply and supply for all high voltage experiments of the time. That included capacitive discharge through mercury vapor lamps to cause them to superluminate, to make rubies and sapphires in the arc, burn through wood to name a few.

The vacuum pump was a very old beat up single stage pump with no top cap on it and not much oil in it. There was no motor at first so I had to spin it as fast as I could with my finger through the large pulley. Later on I found an old motor and belt and physically held the motor away from the pump with my foot to get the bet tension to spin the pump. Needless to say, the plasma runs were short on the order of a minute or less.

While I do not have any pictures of it in operation, the evidence of the sputtered deposits can be seen on the inside of the Pyrex tube. The rubber stoppers are now too dry rotted to be able to get a vacuum but great nostalgia to see it again after so many year and to remember the times of discovery that started back then.

[Rich Feldman]

Nice work there, Frank. Thanks for sharing.

In 1968 I, too, was 12 years old. Might still have some artifacts left from those days. A theremin kit from Popular Electronics? The two-vacuum-tube AM transmitter kit wasn't built until high school electronics class, a year or two later, taught by Mr. Newell.

Oh, and happy 60th birthday! Yours must be somewhere around here.

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-Rich

[Frank Sanns]

Thanks Rich! Yep, the big number later this year.

Sounds like you were bitten by the tinkering bug around the same time. As you said, many projects were available to build and there were electronic stores to go scrounge for parts and window shop in person.

Somewhere in a box is my first plasma physics paper but I think that did not come until 6th grade. I will have to hunt down more of those artifacts. I think you and I an many of us from that time period did very well by using good publications and the public libraries for source material. Reading the actual works of people that pioneered the fields was always enlightening. Ahh the days.

Cheers!