Greetings From Troy, NY

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Michael Bretti
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Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:58 pm
Real name: Michael Bretti

Greetings From Troy, NY

Post by Michael Bretti »

Hello All,

My name is Michael Bretti. I am currently employed as an electrical engineer for a linear accelerator facility (coincidentally during a very exciting time for the lab too, as we are in the process of upgrading our 60 year old 60MeV accelerator to a 150MeV accelerator over the next few years – it is really something to witness and be a part of the birth of a brand new accelerator!), working primarily with high voltage and pulsed power systems for the lab. I have been completely fascinated with high voltage and plasma systems for almost as long as I have been tinkering with electronics. I am particularly interested in all things related to high voltage, pulsed power, and plasma, and have dabbled and worked with numerous systems over the years. My true passion is plasma engineering, and I have actively researched and played around with a wide range of plasma related fields, from atmospheric to vacuum, thermal to non-thermal, DC to RF.

I have known about fusor.net for a while, and have read through many of the forum posts and topics, though I have just now finally decided to join the community to learn more and possibly one day help contribute to this immense collection of knowledge. While I have studied and researched high voltage and plasma related topics on my own for years, only recently have I had the opportunity to have access to fabrication equipment, tools, and extra funds to pursue these projects to a deeper and more intensive level. I have recently acquired a beautiful and very large 21 port stainless high vacuum chamber off of ebay for a couple of hundred dollars (an incredibly lucky find), having scoured the internet for years looking for a suitable and affordable chamber, in addition to having been generously donated three brand new Edwards EO4 600L/s diffusion pumps. With these new major components, I can finally start my vacuum plasma experimental pursuits.

I have two major goals related to the variety of topics on fusor.net. For my own personal projects, I first hope to build up and develop my newly acquired vacuum chamber to a high-level multi-functional research unit, to allow for experiments with: a non-fusion and fusion capable fusor, dense plasma focus, and beam on target system; ion guns; ion and plasma propulsion space engines; magnetron deposition; and e-beam devices. My second goal, for my professional work, is to work on and design several neutron-producing systems, such as a fusion capable fusor, dense plasma focus, and small beam on target accelerator for the new nuclear physics learning lab that has been just recently constructed at our facility for learning and research for undergrad and graduate students.

Fusor.net is a tremendous wealth of collected knowledge, and I am absolutely blown away by all the amazing stuff people have come up with, built, and shared on this site, as well as the shear amount of experience that everyone is willing to share to further advance these fields and making these sciences more accessible.
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Richard Hull
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Joined: Fri Jun 15, 2001 9:44 am
Real name: Richard Hull

Re: Greetings From Troy, NY

Post by Richard Hull »

Welcome!

If you want to play with plasmas and nuclear particle physics, you must have a suitable, well built and well sealed vacuum system. It is laudable that you want to start here. The fusor chamber, itself, is a pitiably easy cobble up, compared to the vacuum system, power supply and instrumentation.

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
Michael Bretti
Posts: 175
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:58 pm
Real name: Michael Bretti

Re: Greetings From Troy, NY

Post by Michael Bretti »

Thanks!

My biggest concern right now is in fact properly sealing everything on this chamber. I originally was going to start with a very simple and small system, but I figured that since I would be doing a lot more than just fusor research, I wanted something large enough with enough flexibility that could be expandable for a wide range of experiments (especially for stuff like ion and plasma drive engines). The chamber itself is in excellent condition. It was originally a custom welded stainless Varian vacuum manifold, but I don't exactly know for what purpose. All of the knife edges and seal faces are in perfect condition though, which is always a good place to start. The chamber itself has a 10" bore and stands 28" tall at 95lbs, and has x2 10" conflat ports, x1 8" conflat port, x2 6" conflat ports, x5 4.5" conflat ports, x9 2.75" conflat ports, and x2 1.33" conflat ports - this will be a very long term project, but all of these ports will allow for a ton of flexibility and expandability down the road. I will definitely post a picture of it, probably in the Images du Jour section. I think the diffusion pump should be adequate even for this chamber, and only requires a backing pump with about 4cfm for maximum throughput, which I will probably get a 6 or 8cfm pump to be safe. I think once I get it all blanked off and checked I will start with a simple demo fusor and work from there since that would be the easiest and least involved to start with. One thing I am looking forward to is that the chamber has four of the 4.5" conflats pointing to the center at 45 degee angles, which would be perfect for a quad ion gun injected system, either for fusor work or for other ion/plasma gun experiments.
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Richard Hull
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Real name: Richard Hull

Re: Greetings From Troy, NY

Post by Richard Hull »

The larger the chamber and plumbing, the larger the forepump and diff pumps have to be. This means that for fusion and flowing deuterium in the fusor, more precious deuterium will ultimately be pumped through and out the forepump vent to air. Big is nice, but all throughout the idea of "big" demands "big money".

Richard
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
John Futter
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Joined: Wed Apr 21, 2004 10:29 pm
Real name: John Futter
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Re: Greetings From Troy, NY

Post by John Futter »

Michael
Welcome you seen to have the same sort of job I do
I work here
https://www.gns.cri.nz/Home/Our-Science ... m-Analysis
Most of my time is in designing high voltage equipment to support our accelerators and the ion implanters we make
Michael Bretti
Posts: 175
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2017 12:58 pm
Real name: Michael Bretti

Re: Greetings From Troy, NY

Post by Michael Bretti »

Richard Hull,

Thanks for the advice! Pumping demands for this will certainly be more, but I think this diffusion pump should be able to handle it. I honestly forgot about how much more deuterium I would need for a larger than a small chamber. At this point, I won't be getting to any deuterium experiments for a long time, but the size and deuterium requirements are definitely something I should consider. Though to be fair, there is no way I could have passed up a deal on a chamber like this, although in the long run it will cost much more to get up and running than a simple chamber, but I think it could be worth it.


John Futter,

That's pretty cool! Sounds like your facility has a lot of advanced capabilities. I hope to play around with very simple ion beam systems with my new chamber eventually, though obviously nowhere near to the level that you work with. There are definitely very few engineers out there who work in these types of fields, compared to how many engineers there actually are (graduating, I was the only ee interested in high voltage/pulsed power, and for everyone else, high voltage was anything more than 24v). Though I'm sure the concentration of people in these fields is higher in a community such as this, and I'm glad I have the opportunity to connect with other engineers and researchers such as yourself around the world who share similar interests. I definitely think that this area of engineering gets to do the coolest stuff out of any of the engineering fields. A lot of work I have done for the lab has been supporting the development and testing of pulsers for our electron gun injector for the linac, in addition to other hv development work for the lab. Since we operate in kind of the mid-range power, we are in a bit of a unique position in terms of linear accelerators, in that we aren't just focused on a single experiment or task - people here refer to our machine as the "swiss-army knife of accelerators", since we cover a whole range of experiments from academic to industry.
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