Thin-Walled Acrylic Demo Fusor

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Samuel Low
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Thin-Walled Acrylic Demo Fusor

Post by Samuel Low »

So I had my doubts about 5mm thick acrylic being able to hold the walls in a vacuum, and had extra implosion shielding just in case. Surprisingly, it held well, down to a pressure of about 500 Pascals (rough estimate, my gauge doesn't actually go to that level since its a cheap one). Did a simple setup for the Singapore University of Technology and Design open house, so here are some picture sharings, and also this post serves as a testimony to the strength of acrylic (even at 5mm thickness) for simple cheap vacuum chamber setups :)

Of course, this is bordering on the safety of vacuum chamber design. I wouldn't advise to go any lower in wall thickness. Acrylic splits clean when it fractures, but if you use glass, and at that level of thin-ness, be prepared to shield against dangerous glass shrapnel if it fractures.

Transformer was a 12kV NST but I guess after long use, wear and tear (maybe some of the laminate had melted due to misuse or prolonged use), it is outputting about 2000V maximum.
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David Kunkle
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Re: Thin-Walled Acrylic Demo Fusor

Post by David Kunkle »

These things can be surprisingly strong, though still not a bad idea to shield that thing. I have one of these that I got for $50 off ebay:
https://www.belart.com/bel-art-f42029-0 ... -x-22.html

Although polycarbonate is stronger than your acrylic, this thing holds full vacuum and the wall is only 3.7 mm thick and 18 inches in diameter! That's only a little thicker than the 1/8" SS that is usually used for vacuum chambers up to about that same diameter.
If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.

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Richard Hull
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Re: Thin-Walled Acrylic Demo Fusor

Post by Richard Hull »

Acrylic or poly-carb is fine for a very weak demo device, but the instant you get a low enough vacuum, if you ever can, to get star mode, the rays will hit the plastic and absolutely destroy the vacuum with plastic vapor. The images seen here are at a terrible vacuum pressure in the 200 micron or higher range. Any genuine measured pressures to share in run mode???

Richard Hull
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ian_krase
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Re: Thin-Walled Acrylic Demo Fusor

Post by ian_krase »

If the primary problem is direct impingement of plasma, that makes me wonder about the potential of a non-load-bearing, non-sealed glass liner and a plastic bell jar.

(Ultimately, of course, acrylic is just gassy. We can tell that the vacuum is not great by the way it's clinging to the grid).
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