Ed Meserve Fusor Status

[Ed Meserve]

After a short hiatus (life and paying work gets in the way), I have restarted work on my fusor.
I have started this new topic so that it has a title that falls more in-line with the defacto standard for such posts.

Here is a current photo of my rig.

Fusor Rig as of 9/16/22

I have installed and tested a second stage diffusion pump, and also removed the exhaust oil filter on the Welch 1400 and have run a flexible line venting the oil vapor outside. For these tests I did not connect a power supply.

I wanted to see how leaky the chamber was, and how deep I could get the vacuum with both stages, so I ran the vacuum system for the approximately an hour on the 15th , valve off the chamber, and ran the vacuum system again on the 16th for a longer duration. Below is the recorded data, in tabular and chart form:

9/15/22, Vacuum System Run

9/16/22, Vacuum System Run

9/15-9/16 Tabular Data

The deepest vacuum I was able to pull was 1.8mTorr in the Chamber, with 10 mTorr on the Foreline.

Vacuum Gauges, at max vacuum