Good Afternoon from Central California

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Marley ottman
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Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2018 5:05 pm
Real name: Marley Ottman

Good Afternoon from Central California

Post by Marley ottman »

Hello everyone,
My name is Marley Ottman, I'm a junior in high school, and am in the early stages of planning a demo fusor project slated for this summer. My knowledge of my many engineering and scientific disciplines utilized in the construction of a fusor is limited. This site is clearly a wealth of many years of collective experience and knowledge, and I look forward to achieving my goals while (if possible) adding to the community.
Tom McCarthy
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Real name: Tom McCarthy
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Re: Good Afternoon from Central California

Post by Tom McCarthy »

Welcome to the forum Marley!

I would strongly advise finding someone older and more experienced to talk things through with ASAP. There are a number of guys in California (I know it's a big place) you might be able to link up with. Even someone you can ask questions over WhatsApp etc will greatly hasten your work and learning.

Best of luck, make sure to read the FAQs, and post pictures in Images Du Jour - you'll get good feedback!
prestonbarrows
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Joined: Sun Jun 24, 2012 1:27 am
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Re: Good Afternoon from Central California

Post by prestonbarrows »

As mentioned previously, the best route is to get a hold of someone even marginally famaliar with the fields of high voltage or nuclear science. Enemurable ways to kill yourself dead.

As a stopgap, If I had to recommend repositores of info relavent to this hobby (if only spiritually):

https://www.youtube.com/user/theCodyReeder/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/msadaghd/videos
https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog/videos
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Dennis P Brown
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Real name: Dennis Brown

Re: Good Afternoon from Central California

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Building a demo fusor is not very difficult (compared to a real fusor) and can be fairly safe if one uses a minimum of caution and reads the FAQ's, and asks questions here when in doubt. A NST (see FAQ's for that) are fairly safe (but one can kill one's self if you are extremely foolish) and creating a demo fusor with just a low end vacuum pump is a useful exercise and learning experience.

A higher goal if one has some funds, would be to create a fusor grade vacuum system. Such a system has other fun applications so building a high vacuum system is a useful goal in of itself (opens up the ability to do sputtering, high quality metal vapor coatings, operate ion guns to name the main uses besides for a fusor.) Depends on your objectives: if one just wants to join the plasma club, a simple vacuum pump and home made chamber using available items like a pot can be done. My first vacuum pump was from a non-working air conditioner unit which I obtained for free (required some work to make usable.) Ditto for an old NST that I found in a demolish building site.

Best of luck.
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