Plasma!

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David Lloyd-George
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun Apr 23, 2017 10:36 pm
Real name: david lloyd-george

Plasma!

Post by David Lloyd-George »

After some troubleshooting, we were able to get a plasma in our vacuum chamber. We achieved this after an interesting change to our set up. Our current measurement system uses a 10Ω 25W resistor bolted to our frame with one end coming from the HV power supply ground, and the other going to our star ground point. We couldn't achieve a plasma with this and out of frustration, we bypassed the resistor and had the HV supply ground go straight to our star ground point. This change made all the difference for us and we got our first plasma that way. We then set up our HV divider system however we got some interesting results that didn't fit with what we had expected. Our voltage reading stayed approximately the same even though we had cranked up the Variac to levels that should've given much higher voltages. We then decided to connect the HV divider to our power supply directly and got these values for our voltage:
(the voltage divider is approximately 1000X)

AC input voltage, DC output voltage of HV divider (measured with multimeter)
26 V, -7.5V
38.7 V, -10V
47.1 V, -12.5V
58.0 V, -15.1V

We will try and work out some of these issues regarding measurement. The plasma pressure was the one thing that we could measure and we found that 100mTorr gave us the best looking plasma. After that, the plasma started to disappear and completely disappeared once our vacuum hit 12mTorr.
IMG_0773.jpg
IMG_0773.jpg (51.78 KiB) Viewed 4089 times
IMG_0770-1.jpg
IMG_0770-1.jpg (25.03 KiB) Viewed 4089 times
IMG_0764.jpg
IMG_0764.jpg (48.15 KiB) Viewed 4089 times
Any questions or comments are always appreciated.

Thanks,
David Lloyd-George & Beauregard Pearl

(If this qualifies us for the plasma club, we would like both of us to be admitted because we have been working on this together)
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Richard Hull
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Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: Plasma!

Post by Richard Hull »

Sounds like you have an open 10 ohm resistor or a poor connection to same. No functional 10 ohm current measuring resistor placed properly in the ground leg will ever thwart fusor operation! It is impossible.

Measure the resistor with an ohm meter.

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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