I HATE money :)

[Adam Szendrey]

Hi all!

I really enjoy reading about your successes in building the fusor.
I really want to build one myself, but i dont even have money to build a demo version. (
The vaccum and radiation detection part is extremely expensive. And i cant really salvage any of that equippment. As for the supply part i am winding a 10 kV 1000 Watt transformer for my tesla coil. And i guess a 10 kV supply would be enough for a demo fusor. (the Tesla coil itself is due to produce several hundred thousand volts, creating some pretty neat arcs )
So the conclusion is that i will need atleast a thousand (optimistic, more like several thousand) dollars to buy the needed vacuum chamber, the pump and the valves and pipes.
I live in hungary, and i may need to import a good vacuum chamber wich is VERY expensive.
BUT im happy that there are so many people successfully buildin real "fusing" fusors.

Adam

[guest]

Some gentlemen in Spain built a demo fusor using a pyrex mixing bowl and what appeared to be an automobile wheel for the bottom portion. It's fine if you have the bucks, but creativity can substitiute for money much of the time.

[Captain_Proton]

Tell me about it!!! I dont hate money, but I hate spending so much of it on my fusor. I've so far spent about 25 grand on this thing so far.... since two years before Tom Ligon's article in Analog, and just dropped $5,800.00 more last week on a used maglev turbo and Ion pumps. Ouch!!! Still, though, I'm doing great science and doing what I love. As Larry Leins would say... Fusion is fun!!!

[daniele]

I have few money to spend too...
I am going with the "a few every month" approach.

In sept. I'm getting married and you all know that a wedding is expensive !!! New house, new furnitures and so on... Save all the money you can for this project and acquire the parts few at a time, you will distribute the entire expense over time.

I also am going with the "build what you can"
I could have bought 2 valves and a trap, but I have chosen a TIG inverter...
Could It sound a little stupid, but on the long run I'll be free to do more.
Valves and trap can wait for a while...

Ask all the friends you have if they know someone who welds, turns with a lathe, mills, machine metals, sells any kind of gas stuff and so on...
Ask to schools, professors, and labs and students, if there is any way to get some vacuum stuff.
Go to scrap yards, scavenge all you can !
Don't be lazy, time will give you what you have been fighting for... for so much time !

Nobody gives you anything for free... FALSE !!!

People are often kind, and if they see you motivated, maybe they'll give you some stuff for free...

Last but not least: I am following this project from 2 years circa, and I'm still saving money and studying the best approach to get more spendind less... don't think fusor is a fast project!!!

Only the neuts it produces are

ciao
Daniele

[guest]

I hate to tell you but I told you so!
I devoted a fraction of my monthly income to this stuff
every month so far only 2 grand as yet.
No you haven't seen it all yet.
See I not too proud to go dumpster diving .
I even collect stuff I have no real use for.
I sell it for cash.. Free plus a dollars worth of gas to look.
I even collect cans at work and salvage metals for sale.
I average about $50.00 a week in just cans.
Hey I bought a diffusion pump ,a 55 watt solar panel and a 110 amp hr battery by just salvaging aluminum cans.
The budgeting will drive you nuts if you let it.
I wait for stuff due to the fact I'm now on a fixed income
and part time job. I intersperse what I can do with more research. If a part is driving me wonko ... I read up on it... sneak into a lab to see and touch it. Then duplicate it ... the older it is usually the easier it is to clone. I have lots of time but a small budget. Being retired I spend days on stuff that I would bought new just a few years ago. So I take the long route to some items. Would love to use Pentoil but use Octoil instead.
My vacuum bench is a converted Sears workbench.
My food is a bachelor's pot pie with fresh squeezed lemons for lemonade ...cost per meal about $2.20. Parts ,Parts,parts...
Whew! Where was I ?
Oh.. Money! Be a cheap bastard where possible.
Quality does not have to equal expense.
See my posts in.
Administration and General Topics
under
The Tao of Cheap

And

The Fusion Powered Future
under
What to do until the fusion jackpot hits

Don't feel bad Captain Proton back in the Eighties when I was still doing the yuppie thing I spent
$20,000.00 for a wire forming press. Another 8 g's on chemicals and ceramic processing gear. My aim was to build a high temperature superconductor cyclotron.
High tech is not called the bleeding edge for nothing.
Do I regret it ? Nope.
I have many paths availible to me ... but an iron will is necessary for that first step on that million mile journey.
I'm glad someone has finally caught on to the bittersweet quality of "fusion is fun". It has a multitude of meaning depending on your stage of developement.


Larry Leins
Physics Teacher

[guest]

Adam:
No pump?
Do you have access to liquid nitrogen?
If not do you have access to compressed air?
There are more than one way to skin a mule you know.
Back in the so called good old days we used water aspirators for vacuum. Most aspirators hook up on the
kitchen water facet. Compressed air aspirators work basically the same. Use a gettering agent such as metallic calcium or strontium or barium to get usable vacuum.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher

[guest]

Larry,

So, did you end up building that cyclotron? Sounds insteresting I would be interested in hearing more about that if its not too much trouble.

Thanks

[guest]

Yes I got to run it for 2 months before my accident.
It used 300 m of homemade superconducting wire.
It was 123 Yttrium superconductor encased in a silver tube.
The preform was the size of a hot dog and ended up as a wire of .02 inches... not as thin as commercial wire.
It produced 1.5 webers of magnetic field. It produced 2 mev deuterons at full energy..my rf sucked pretty bad.
I based the design on the 1957 cyclotron in Scientific American. It consumed 10L of nitrogen a day. Total cost around 30,000 bucks to build. It took a years earnings to build and run it for a total of 50,000 dollars. It was crushed in a scrap yard during my first year in the hospital. I still have the knowledge of how to to it but the fusor just is so much better than the deuteron stripper method.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher

[guest]

Wow, That's one hell of a garage physics project. That really sucks that it got trashed. Even if you got bored with it, you could have probably sold it off to a university or Ebay (if it was around back then) or at least donated it to a school. "The Larry Leins cyclotron".

I am looking forward to building my own fusor. After all, how many people can really claim they have a working fusion reactor in their basement?

[guest]

I was surrounded by people that did expensive hobby stuff on the side. One of my neighbors built a one man jet aircraft in his garage. I used to go to the LTV junk yard in Arlington Texas with Bill to go junk shopping. Bill built his jet's body from an old wing tank of a Crusader Jet. As I recall he paid for it by the pound.
The guy across the street from me designed and built drag racers in his garage. (Mr Brantley)
A couple of neighbors were Amateur extra Hams with tons of gear. On saturday we would go to the old Collins radio plant in downtown Dallas and dicker on
on storage tubes and microwave gizmos.
One of my Dad's Friends,Roy Price, had enough equipment to build his own hybrid IC chips. Complete with ultrasonic lead bonder,Roy would take bare chip dies from the Collins plant cyanoacrylic them in the pattern he wanted on alumina squares. He then interconnected then with very fine gold wire into complete circuits. He had the coolest stuff in his desk.
I never knew what his final plan was for this stuff.. He died of liver failure at age 43.
My best friend in high school had a neighbor who made models of
military aircraft and powered them with ramjets and
raced them competatively.
I don't tend to think it was a "Special Project" in any sense. I cut my teeth at 14 on cryogenics with my first junk dewar from the Aerospace Surplus Center by Love Field.

Larry Leins
Physics Teacher

[TBenson]

I agree with Larry. There are many ways to attack these problems, and any junkyard often provides the tools you need.

Often if you spend money it's to save time, not out of necessity. Also if you are building stuff as a hobby you would be amazed the free stuff people will give you.

When I was in college and didn't have a dime I built some great stuff with all high-tech composite plastics. I just went around to airports and manufacturers and told them what I was doing, and they slipped me free stuff on the side. Then a couple of them offered me a job, and then I was working and making great money.

The bottom line...money doesn't matter. What matters is that you love what you are doing, and are dedicated to it. People will always respect and reward "passion" especially in engineering and science.