Fusor Forums

The fusor V has been languishing for a month and a half. This means terrible performance until the walls are loaded. which means I have started to do my usual "build up" to the HEAS event with daily runs.
I will show just how terrible it is at the start.

All reports are at 40kv and about 10-11 ma...Unless noted otherwise.
Watch the associated pressure versus one minute best neutron count....

Date..... pressure microns.. Raw neutron count/min (TIER multiplier is 4.9 as determined via Bob Riete's rem ball system last HEAS 2020)
9/5..............5.0......................3608
9/6 .............5.2......................9520
9/7 .............5.7.....................11,050
9/8 .............6.1.....................16,183
9/9 .............6.9.....................21,261......Tier = 104,179 n/s Easy Rhodium activation
9/10............6.7.....................27,882......TIER = 136,622 n/s 42kv @8.8ma
9/11............7.1.....................34,275......TIER = 167,703 n/s 41kv @9.5ma first 5 sec count on Rh was 10X background
9/12............8.4.....................45,101......TIER = 220,994 n/s
9/13............9.5.....................54,589......TIER = 267,486 n/s 42kv @10ma
9/14............10.5....................72,255......TIER = 354,050 n/s 44kv@ 10ma
9/15............11.5....................86,136......TIER = 422,066 n/s 43kv@10.5ma
9/18............12.5....................90,086......TIER = 441,421 n/s 42kv@13ma
9/19............12.8....................97,221......TIER = 479,383 n/s 45kv@11ma.
9/21............13.4....................106,852.....TIER = 523,575 n/s 44kv@11ma D2 pressure makes a big difference with wall loading

Gotta' keep that pressure limit at 40kv going up. Gotta' stoke more fuel into the beast's walls.
At the best I might expect well over 110,000 raw counts/minute at 10-12 microns at my limit near 44kv > 500k n/s TIER

Keeping the home fusion fires burnin'

Richard Hull

Forget about neutron numbers and high voltages on the first days of operation. Throttle the vacuum down a bit and put more fuel in there so the voltage drops down to 20 kv and run for a couple hours. Then push up the voltages and it will respond. Running too lean takes too long to get the chamber conditioned.

Now you know why I am not in the one hour club. A sitting Fusor sucks to get up to good numbers. At least once you have them loaded up, opening it for a very short time then getting it back down is not nearly as bad as a true cold start with a chamber that has been sitting for a month.

Follow the original post day by day as I add run data. It is either amazing how much 2 microns over the 5 original can do.....Or how much wall loading I am getting to react better with that extra two microns at the same voltages and current levels.

Richard Hull

Here is the 11 day plot of your constant voltage data Richard.

Sorry for the piss poor graph but yet another one of my softwares is no longer compatible with the latest Apple OS. It is not properly scaled or labeled but I refuse to learn another freaking graphing system. Give me Lotus 123 from 1985 and I will give you all. Even my old Matlab and Maple no longer work. Unbelievable and I refuse to pay yet again for another license to use softwares that I have already purchased, some multiple times. Add Adobe to that list of scoundrels.

Back to the topic. Just looking at the curve, one would predict that higher and higher pressure would give exponentially increasing numbers. Of course the limit will be when MFP gets too short to get the job done. Enter the smaller, more efficient fusor or fusor variation.

Keep the data coming and we will see where there plateau comes but it is unfortunately not far off.