Hi again everyone,
This is yet another fairly small update. The biggest news is the near completion of my xrt stuff, I have it all under oil and tested successfully to around 30 kv, disconnected from the fusor chamber. The current metering is yet to be set up but all is in place for me just to wire it in. Furthermore, I finished the second wiring of serial communication to my other mks gauge. I have almost finished plumbing the gas handling line as well. My NIM bin is ready to go but the recent excessive cold has kept me from doing much with that. Additionally, I switched out the 1/4” copper tube that was in my feedthrough for an 1/8” stainless one. This gives more clearance inside the tube between the wall and electrical contact. I also epoxied in a washer to keep everything well centered. Sadly I haven’t got any pictures to show today but I will soon have a follow up with pictures of some nice plasma and my HV control and monitoring board.
Best regards,
Aidan
Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress
- Mark Rowley
- Posts: 909
- Joined: Sun Dec 29, 2002 12:20 am
- Real name: Mark Rowley
- Location: Sacramento California
- Contact:
Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress
Sounds like just a matter of time before you fire it up. Keep at it and you’ll be making neuts soon!
Mark Rowley
Mark Rowley
Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress
Hi all,
Sorry for the absence of pictures that were promised last week. After connecting to the chamber, I started having "issues" with the GFCI in my garage. I do say issues very loosely because it was actually just doing its job and I failed to realize that I was drawing too much current and just popping the fuse. I was late to realize because I had thought that it was on a 25 or 30 amp fuse and knew that much was not being drawn. I initially had my HV line and wall line very close and assumed it was inducing a current in the line that tripped the fault detector. After I got my cable management figured out, I still had issues and figured it was something being too close to something else inside the oil filled case of the transformer and so I worked that angle and also improved a bit on the neatness of that, but still to no avail. Finally I decided to really check out the fuse it was on and discovered that it was a 15. Needless to say, having almost a dozen things plugged into an outlet or two on a single fuse doesn't work out.
After that delightful oversight, I decided to improve on my wiring for the serial connection to the vacuum gauges and turned more focus to the neutron detection effort. I got a 6 inch stove pipe and that is now filled with paraffin and will be my moderator for the SI-19N He3 tube I am using. Finally, I got back to the fun stuff only to discover that the cheap camera I am using to watch the grid is excessively sensitive to IR and would get completely overexposed at very low energies applied to the grid even with the digital exposure turned all the way down. Luckily I had some leftover solar film that was perfect for blocking a huge portion of the light reaching the camera. It is basically opaque to visible light so you can really only see the grid through the IR. This is good for operation but bad for pretty pictures. I solved this by removing the lenses from some cheap plastic sunglasses. The color accuracy is lost if both are overlapped but is decently preserved when only one is used. The trade off is the voltage that can be applied before details are lost to the light.
Below are a few pictures of the plasma I ignited earlier today as well as the control/electronics housing rack I assembled.
Sorry for the absence of pictures that were promised last week. After connecting to the chamber, I started having "issues" with the GFCI in my garage. I do say issues very loosely because it was actually just doing its job and I failed to realize that I was drawing too much current and just popping the fuse. I was late to realize because I had thought that it was on a 25 or 30 amp fuse and knew that much was not being drawn. I initially had my HV line and wall line very close and assumed it was inducing a current in the line that tripped the fault detector. After I got my cable management figured out, I still had issues and figured it was something being too close to something else inside the oil filled case of the transformer and so I worked that angle and also improved a bit on the neatness of that, but still to no avail. Finally I decided to really check out the fuse it was on and discovered that it was a 15. Needless to say, having almost a dozen things plugged into an outlet or two on a single fuse doesn't work out.
After that delightful oversight, I decided to improve on my wiring for the serial connection to the vacuum gauges and turned more focus to the neutron detection effort. I got a 6 inch stove pipe and that is now filled with paraffin and will be my moderator for the SI-19N He3 tube I am using. Finally, I got back to the fun stuff only to discover that the cheap camera I am using to watch the grid is excessively sensitive to IR and would get completely overexposed at very low energies applied to the grid even with the digital exposure turned all the way down. Luckily I had some leftover solar film that was perfect for blocking a huge portion of the light reaching the camera. It is basically opaque to visible light so you can really only see the grid through the IR. This is good for operation but bad for pretty pictures. I solved this by removing the lenses from some cheap plastic sunglasses. The color accuracy is lost if both are overlapped but is decently preserved when only one is used. The trade off is the voltage that can be applied before details are lost to the light.
Below are a few pictures of the plasma I ignited earlier today as well as the control/electronics housing rack I assembled.
- Attachments
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- About 14 kv at 9 microns.PNG (50.8 KiB) Viewed 5248 times
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- 36kv, 10 microns.PNG (377.59 KiB) Viewed 5248 times
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- 13 microns at 14.6kv.PNG (30.56 KiB) Viewed 5248 times
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- 12 kv at 12 microns.PNG (135.77 KiB) Viewed 5248 times
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- 3.6kv at 15 microns, viewed through lenses.PNG (82.75 KiB) Viewed 5248 times
- Richard Hull
- Moderator
- Posts: 15032
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
- Real name: Richard Hull
Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress
Aidan, thanks for the fine display and data. You are now in the Plasma club.
Richard Hull
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
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
Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress
Thanks Richard. I still need to work on cooling the chamber and maybe making the wire diameter on the grid larger. I can push the voltage up to about 50 kv with no arcing issues but the wire gets white hot around 36. For cooling I have an old aloha breeze floor fan that moves about 5000 CFM placed roughly 4 feet away from the chamber. Unless I run at lower than average pressure for the size of my chamber, I am not sure how long I will be able to sustain voltages conducive to decent levels of easily detectable fusion. I'm thinking of using 0.032" or 0.05" wire as opposed to my current 0.02" wire for the grid.
Aidan Roy
Aidan Roy
- Richard Hull
- Moderator
- Posts: 15032
- Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
- Real name: Richard Hull
Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress
Keep plugin' you'll get there.
Richard Hull
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
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