Archived - It's alive!

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Adam Szendrey
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Archived - It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

Well, there she blows :) Cathode is rather assymetric, this the funnels. I used a small flyback , driven by a single transistor (fed by a 20 V variable supply, and "clocked" by a function generator) to get this.Crude but effective setup for a demo :).

Now that's what i call "point contact diode" :) (other end is connected to the flyback).



Here's the setup, the HV feed is inside the teflon tubing under the chamber. The diode is inside the tube, you can see it right under the baseplate (where the tube seems narrower). This is ofcourse just a temporary installation, so i can show something to folks asking questions :).




And below is what i get with only the rotary running (i didn't turn on the diff pump, this time the rotary pulled down fast and deep), colors are rather off, and ofcourse the camera sees what the human eye can't, thus the brightness.





Jon Rosenstiel
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Jon Rosenstiel »

Congratulations, Adam. Bet you couldn't sleep after this!

Jon Rosenstiel
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Q »

way to go, adam!
congratulations on first plasma!!

Q
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

Thanks guys :)
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Re: It's alive!

Post by DaveC »

Adam - Congrats! Very nice work. True spirit of experimentation there.

You probably have this on your "to do" list, but it would very interesting to see how a precision centering of the inner cage over the apparent center of the plasma sphere, affects the jet size, location and number.

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Richard Hull
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Richard Hull »

Good going there, Adam. I will add your name to the Plasma Club list.

I have also archived your effort.

That glow is about a 30-40 micron glow. Wait 'til you hit 8-15 microns or so and the stars come out! Meanwhile, play with pressure voltage and current and a magnet.



Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

The pirani gauge showed pressures under 10 microns, but that instrument is old, so it might be off. I'm planning to play around with loads of fun stuff, grid geometry, different magnetic fields, etc... I have a large cheramic ring magnet and a number of NIBs.
Btw, the glow destabilized as the rotary pumped down further, jumping from the 11 o'clock position to 5 o'clock, and back, rapidly (as it can be seen those are the two larger spacings). If the voltage was decreased there were two jets at the same time.
I have a video, i'm going to upload to an ftp server, so you can download it. It shows how the poissor forms, as the pressure drops.

Adam
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Richard Hull
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Richard Hull »

The glow you show above is definitely well above 20 microns, regardless of what your gauge says. (These old fusor eyes know.) As the pressure drops, the single jet thins to a line with no flaring. More drop will have the single line do a dance about the openings flitting around nervously. As pressure drops into the teens, two or more jets appear and, finally, just before the single micron digits, a star will form. Just a few microns lower and all glow extinguishes. This is a learned process. Every fusioneer sees it every time he pumps down.

A diff pump will not allow the star to form as it yanks the pressure down from 16 microns into the 10e-4 torr range very rapidly and the glow snuffs out.

Richard Hull
Progress may have been a good thing once, but it just went on too long. - Yogi Berra
Fusion is the energy of the future....and it always will be
The more complex the idea put forward by the poor amateur, the more likely it will never see embodiment
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

At least i know that gauge is pretty mutch worthless :P.
Maybe with a needle valve, it's possible? Using it as a leak, to maintain the desired pressure even when the diff. is running.
I can't upload the video to the server where i wanted it to, but i'll keep trying (it's 41 megs). Here are two more shots:
Higher voltage , flickering between two jets:


Lower voltage, stable:


Adam
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Re: It's alive!

Post by WH »

Adam, congratulations and good luck with your experiments!

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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Archived - It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

Finally, thanks to a friend, i was able to upload the avi to a server:
At the beggining of the video , when the camera vibrates a little, that's when i turned on the rotary.

http://qrwaclan.atw.hu/fusor/formation.AVI

Enjoy,

Adam
WH

Re: Archived - It's alive!

Post by WH »

Fascinating to watch. That little luminous sphere seems to have a life of it´s own. At one point there are two of them.
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Donald McKinley
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Re: Archived - It's alive!

Post by Donald McKinley »

Beautiful set up A.

I scrounged a flyback from an old TV but it's potted with multiple secondaries. I notice that the one that you are using isn't potted, convenient for rewrapping if necessary.

Is this a common configuration. What should I look for to get this configuration.

Thanks
Don
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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Archived - It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

This is an older type, you won't find such "bare" flybacks in "modern" TVs or monitors (well personally i haven't seen such). I got my hands on about 15-20 of these, about 3 years ago , when my high school dumped a lot of "useless" stuff.
The primary coil can be easily removed and rewound, and that's what i did. But this small flyback is only useful for demo purposes.

Adam
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Re: Archived - It's alive!

Post by DaveC »

Don -

It depends on the actual flyback you have, but sometimes all those primary coils are not so mysterious when you ring them out. Some designs will use a center-tapped primary which gives you either 3 or 4 connections depending on if the two ends of the primary winding are brought out separately. Then there may be a current sense winding.. which basically is providing a "volts-per turn" type of signal for feedback control. So you could easily have 6 leads altogether. The secondary is usually just two leads, the HV end is pretty obvious - a fat well insulated wire. The ground end of the secondary could be quite inconspicuous.. just a fine wisp of magnet wire going to the return side of the circuit.

Use an ohmmeter and see what you have. Also, if you use a low powered signal generator set in the 15 - 45 kHz, range (and presuming you can lay hands on a scope), you should be able to sort out the phasing of those primaries, and even (use care here) get an idea of the turns ratio...with a simple Resistive (or capacitive ) voltage divider on the secondary side.

It's very instructive if you have it all on the screen at one time. But you do need to be sure the primary drive voltage is low enough that you don't fry the scope on the secondary. Use 100 or even 1000 to one divider. (1meg and a 1 K ohm resistor will work well enough) or a (1 nF and a 1 uf capacitor - use ceramics or metallized plastic film caps... no electrolytics).

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Adam Szendrey
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Re: Archived - It's alive!

Post by Adam Szendrey »

Ah crap, all the photos are gone! I'll try to locate them , they might be on one of my many very old archive DVDs...

Found one at least:
Adam Szendrey - Fusor - 2006
Adam Szendrey - Fusor - 2006
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