NIM Bin Setup

[Garrett Young]

Here is my setup:

1400 Crate

3106D, 0-6 kV H.V. Power Supply (http://www.canberra.com/products/radioc ... SP0067.pdf)
Will 300uA max. output current be enough?

2022, Spectroscopy Amplifier (http://www.canberra.com/products/radioc ... -M3833.pdf)
Is this type of amplifier appropriate for 3He tube?

550A, SCA (http://www.ortec-online.com/download/550A.pdf)

XXX, Counter

Suggestions? Am I missing anything?

[Nick Peskosky]

Assuming you intend to utilize a gas proportional tube (He3, BF3) as your neutron detector, you'll also need to procure a charge sensitive pre-amplifier like the Tennelec TC-170 or its variants. Start looking for SHV cables/adapters as they are relatively hard to come by at a reasonable price and even fabricating your own with connectors from Amphenol or similar can become quite pricey rather quickly. Make sure your short lengths of coax which connect the individual modules have the right matching impedance (50 ohm is typical). I highly recommend you buy/steal/borrow an oscilloscope, MCA and pulse generator. Setting up and calibrating a working NIM rack is hard enough with a typical AmBe/PuBe/Cf source the first time you try. Without the ability to visualize the signals propagating through the rack the task becomes even more challenging.

[Garrett Young]

I'll acquire a charge sensitive pre-amplifier (maybe the CANBERRA 814).

I'm still concerned about the 300uA supply current. Does anyone know the range of current requirements for the proportional 3He tubes?

Fortunately, I do have an oscilloscope and pulse generator and planned on using them to configure the setup.

Thanks,

[Richard Hull]

300ua is a huge amount of current for a gas proportional tube. You will need far less than 100ua.

Richard Hull

[Garrett Young]

I'm considering the following scintillation detector for secondary measurement confirmation: http://www.evproducts.com/tn15.html

Thoughts?

[Richard Hull]

I have followed Hitachi's attempted development of silicon PMT replacements. Maybe it has matured now. Their comments about equaling a 4 inch,4 atm, 3He tube of 1/2" diameter is rather stunning. Any pricing on this little gem??? No living being here has used one with a fusor. You would be the trial balloon on this.

Richard Hull

[Garrett Young]

They quoted it at 2,480 USD.

[prestonbarrows]

Can't say I know much about this specific model, but in general the little monolithic detectors like this can be a double edged sword.

It is nice when something is plug and play right out of the box; but that also tends to mean you can't modify or adjust anything.

Its nice when you just have one sleek unit with nothing to worry about; but a black box tends to mean you cant fix/upgrade anything ever. Very easy to get bricked.

Its nice when an instrument comes with its own set of software; but that tends to be proprietary and difficult to hook into any other system. It is also easy to get screwed if the company goes out of business or simply decides to stop supporting this line of devices. Can't tell you how many DOS or windows 95 machines are lurking around in corners of labs and running programs off floppy discs because some legacy piece of equipment needs it to run (RGAs, MCAs, and CNC machines are pretty notorious for this).

These are some of the reasons 50 year old NIM hardware still works so well. Simple to repair, nothing proprietary, modular.
These are also some of the reasons you hardly ever see a working iphone that is more than 3 years old.