Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Current images of fusor efforts, components, etc. Try to continuously update from your name, a current photo using edit function. Title post with your name once only. Change image and text as needed. See first posting for details.
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Mark Rowley
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Mark Rowley »

Dennis, I'd venture a guess that it is a version of Liam David's excellent HV Feedthru design.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13220

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Dennis P Brown
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Dennis P Brown »

I hope it isn't a high voltage (HV) feed-thru; the lower section will easily short through that thin piece of glass tubing; assuming it does far enough pass the steel bushing. That type of arrangement won't hold except for lower voltage systems - in which case its very long length is not needed. Thick ceramic tubing is what most people use - thin walled glass tubing also tends to fail in a very bad way when the arc through occurs. The arrangement in the pic appears to have two glass tubes but again, the plasma tends to leak around the ends and find the nearest ground that is in contact with the glass - as such, glass isn't ideal for that reason.
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Aidan_Roy
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

Hi Dennis and Mark,

The glass tube is for the DIY feedthrough as mentioned by you Mark. I have to disagree with you Dennis on your most recent post however because the feedthrough that I and Liam David and likely many others have made has demonstrably gone to and above the 50kV mark. The tube is 2 mm thick quartz glass and is at least 1/4 inch clear of the threaded rod, that will be seen passing through the center of the tube in later photos, on all sides.

I will have pictures tonight of my first plasma. I did it with 2 loops of copper wire, each loop being 3/8 inch in diameter, attached stupidly crudely to the end of a threaded rod that goes down into the chamber through the glass tube. The tube cap is the electrical connection which, currently, is running just fine around 7,500 volts from a rectified 15kV transformer. Much more detail and specifics will be provided when I post the pictures later.

Aidan
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by NickBarsley »

Really great Aidan! I'm a month or so behind you, but working to a very similar design (and similar components from ebay!).
I hope to be in a position to do my first vacuum tests in the coming weeks when the final connections i need arrive.
Will keep watching with great interest!
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Liam David
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Liam David »

I can still vouch for the glass feedthrough design. I've tested it up to 60kV both with and without plasma, and my only limitation is x-ray shielding and corona on my ballast resistor. Never had any arcs or breakdowns. There have been some modifications on the plasma end, but these I'll describe in the original post rather than pollute here. Here's a picture of everything operating at 54kV without issue.

GUI 3 July 20 2020.png

The only failure mode so far is my idiocy in breaking the glass...

IMG_20200724_162759.jpg

One quick recommendation: I'd add several layers of tape around the glass like in the above image to prevent the tube from creeping into the chamber. The tape just sits against the quick-connect fitting.

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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

As promised, here are the pictures of my first plasmas established in this chamber.
IMG_4071.jpg
IMG_4069.jpg
IMG_4068.jpg
IMG_4067.jpg
IMG_4066.jpg
IMG_4065.jpg
The system was running at 6,000 volts fairly stably. No current metering set up yet but I'd be willing to assume it was somewhere between 7 and 10 mA. The pictures of the plasma creeping up the tube of the feedthrough were taken at higher pressures(150-200 microns) while the rest were taken between 10 and 45 microns. The last picture, without plasma, was of the system shut off just so the grid was clearly in sight. It is truly a terrible grid and I know this. I cobbled it up quickly and did a few runs with it, just to see if I was even ready to use the little bit of tungsten wire I have and make a good one. The threaded rod was not sheathed in a piece of aluminum or stainless tubing as it will be once the feedthrough is completely finished and it caused much corona disturbance(as expected.) Most electrical connections were crude and prettying up the whole mess is now my next step.

Liam, I used a bit of duct tape for a temporary fix while the system was under vacuum, I will switch over to kapton once I start being able to use the diff pump and once the chamber starts being able to get hot enough for the switch to be justified.

I will probably add more pictures of the entire set up once it is all prettied up and ready to be truly presented.

Aidan
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Richard Hull
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Aidan, you can be in the plasma club with instrumentation, full data and photo of your system with you init. Good work so far. (updated 8/20/20)

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
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

Richard,

Thanks for adding me to the list, hopefully I won't have to wait too long now for real fusion.

I also read the "Dumping the trash" thread under the announcements and admin section and would like to state very clearly that if you or any of the older guys think I'm asking for too much help or requesting information that could easily be found out on my own, please let me know. I really don't want to be an overly dependent, whiny, fusion newbie and I really do want someone to "slap" me back in check if I fall out of line and fail to use common sense before posting. Thanks.

Aidan
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

So it’s been a while since the last update, and today is really nothing spectacular, but I’m doing an update on my progress since the last post. I now have a proper grid set up, much better than the ugly mangled wire mess that was last pictured in this thread. Also, the resistor string for voltage metering is done, 1.2 gigaohms spread over one-hundred twenty 10 meg 1 watt resistors semi-coated in a rubber dielectric and wrapped around a 3 inch pvc pipe. This will be submerged under oil with my newly acquired 80 kv center tapped x-ray transformer, which will be arriving around the 16th and tested for functionality soon after. On top of this, my NIM bin is complete and everything seems to be working save for the discriminator(maybe more on this in a new post at a later date). I also have acquired a He3 tube and that seems to be in good order as well.

Seeing as this is an images thread, I include the resistor string below:
7A896460-4749-4E45-9889-0B467AAD5D31.jpeg

Hopefully before the holiday season sweeps me away as school has these last few months, there will be a follow up post on the fully* completed NIM setup and the beginnings of the gas handling for deuterium. That’s all for now.

Aidan
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Richard Hull
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Good work, We like to see updates. Thanks for filling us in on your progress.

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
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Aidan_Roy
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

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
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Mark Rowley
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Mark Rowley »

Sounds like just a matter of time before you fire it up. Keep at it and you’ll be making neuts soon!

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Aidan_Roy
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

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.
Attachments
NIM and Transformer metering with control.jpg
About 33kv at 20 microns viewed through solar film and output of gauges.PNG
About 14 kv at 9 microns.PNG
About 14 kv at 9 microns.PNG (50.8 KiB) Viewed 5026 times
36kv, 10 microns.PNG
36kv, 10 microns.PNG (377.59 KiB) Viewed 5026 times
13 microns at 14.6kv.PNG
13 microns at 14.6kv.PNG (30.56 KiB) Viewed 5026 times
12 kv at 12 microns.PNG
12 kv at 12 microns.PNG (135.77 KiB) Viewed 5026 times
3.6kv at 15 microns, viewed through lenses.PNG
3.6kv at 15 microns, viewed through lenses.PNG (82.75 KiB) Viewed 5026 times
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Richard Hull
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Aidan, thanks for the fine display and data. You are now in the Plasma club.

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
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Aidan_Roy
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Aidan_Roy »

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
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Richard Hull
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Re: Aidan Roy - My Fusor Progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Keep plugin' you'll get there.

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
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