Progress Update - First Light

[Adam Ingle]

My feedthrough finally arrived. Only 63 days short of it's scheduled time. Because of the delay, I had pretty much everything else in place. I had already created my grid using the updated method Jon Rosenstiel designed with tungsten and it is a simple pressure fit to the feedthrough.

Once assembled I got to pumping. I got far below one micron fast and held the pumps there to out-gas any contaminants I might have introduced with the grid installation.

Switching on my power supply, I slowly brought the pressure up inside the chamber. At about 10 microns I started to get light. The picture below is at 15 microns, 15kv @ 5mA.

To those who have not yet ventured into the plasma creation, as all who have said before, it is an art form. Dancing between temperatures, pressures, voltages and amperages can become a dizzying task to keep track of.

While waiting for my feedthrough, I also started putting out plugs to try and obtain some deuterium. Unfortunately, I believe the climate for obtaining deuterium is still changing quite rapidly. And not in a positive direction.

I worked with a friend of mine who owns a manufacturing facility where they fabricate protective metal housings among other things. After talking to him about the deuterium, he talked with his Airgas rep who was unaware of such gas. So the rep sent some internal e-mails to his group to gen an idea. As it turns out, the rep was berated from the top down at Airgas. He received many e-mails about red-flags and dangers of deuterium among other hoopla.

Sad times indeed.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures and thanks for all the help/FAQs!!

More to come...

[Conrad Farnsworth]

That doesn't look like atmospheric gas is it CO?
-Conrad

[Nikelopez]

Congratulations on achieving first light. This is a really nice setup, you have here.

Might I ask, where did you get your feedthrough from?

Thanks,
Nike

[Carl Willis]

Hi Adam,

Looks good! Clean and professional layout, and it looks like you have a nice custom bench. Do you have plans to add deuterium to this in the near future?

-Carl

[Richard Hull]

Adam,

Great work and nice system........

I have added your name to the Plasma Club.

Richard Hull

[Adam Ingle]

Many thanks, all!

Richard, Thanks again! It's been a labor of love thus far and I've got high hopes for what is to come.

Conrad, it's straight atmosphere. However, I pumped it down all the way and slowly brought the pressure back up. I have a feeling at the lower pressures, only one type of gas is in enough quantity to be made into plasma. I did continue to increase the pressure and ran through all the blues, pinks, purples and violets.

Nike, I got my feedthrough from MDC Vacuum (Insulator Seal). While I wasn't excited about the wait time, I am quite pleased with the product itself. And if I had to do it again, I would.

Carl, I am hoping to add deuterium as soon as I can possibly procure some. It's been a bit harder than I thought it would have been. Even having what I thought were the proper resource channels as I mentioned earlier. Sad to see things go that way for all of us as it continues to change.