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Hello from Vancouver/Hamilton

Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2018 12:39 pm
by Curtis Graham
Hello all,
My name is Curtis Graham, and I am in my fourth year of engineering physics at McMaster University. I'm looking into building a fusor with some of my spare time, as particle accelerators and fusion reactors are a huge area of interest for me. In terms of relevant experience, I am currently working at a co-op placement at TRIUMF as part of a team designing a high voltage feed through for the new ARIEL accelerator. I also have some experience in school working with rotary pumps and turbos in low to high vacuum. My end goal is to make a fusor with a fairly high neutron production rate to be used as a source for activation experiments, but I figure I'd better start walking before trying to run and try my hand at a demo fusor first. Looking forward to learning and talking with the people on this site.

Curtis Graham

Re: Hello from Vancouver/Hamilton

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 8:09 am
by Dennis P Brown
Hello. You should consider doing an ion gun system to achieve fusion - combining both an accelerator design and fusion. Developing a true linear accelerator (not a simple electro-static system) for deuterium ions would be a great project and extremely interesting to post here. The key would be building the proper oscillator driver for the accelerator tube. Just a thought.

Re: Hello from Vancouver/Hamilton

Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2018 11:18 am
by Michael Bretti
Curtis and Dennis, you may be interested in the big project I have been researching and developing for a while now. I haven't posted the details here yet, and won't be making my official announcement on the system probably until after New Year's, if I get all of the preliminary prep work done in time, but it will be an open-source, fully engineered and built from scratch research-class device unlike any beam system that has been built here or at the maker level before. If you are interested in accelerator technology, you won't want to miss this (while the primary goal isn't fusion research, it can also be used for fusion/neutron production depending on the mode I run it in.) My goal with this project is to lower the barrier of entry for true high power/high energy particle physics for the maker community, and bring in a system that will blow open the doors for a huge range of particle beam experiments not yet done at the amateur level. It will use some very old and niche technology in this field, but make true high-power beams accessible at this level. Right now I am finishing up vacuum simulations, and will be completing my literature review on the subject - several hundreds of papers and numerous textbooks on the subject, and will release more details after the vacuum system is running and the preliminary design is complete.

Re: Hello from Vancouver/Hamilton

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 7:55 am
by Dennis P Brown
That really sounds interesting and I look forward to your possible posting in two months or so.
Best to use a new thread rather than this thread to tell the community about your possible idea.

Re: Hello from Vancouver/Hamilton

Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 10:39 am
by Michael Bretti
Dennis,

Yes, my apologies, I will certainly be making a seperate post regarding this work when the time comes. I saw there was some brief discussion and interest on accelerators here, and being this as my major focus, figured I would share some small crumbs on some potentially very exciting developments for its use in the maker community.

Curtis,

Welcome to the forums, there is an incredible wealth of info that you will find here, and certainly more to come. Good luck on your endeavors to begin down this path! Sounds like you have also have some great experience working with major labs as well.

Re: Hello from Vancouver/Hamilton

Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2018 1:01 pm
by Curtis Graham
Dennis,
Thanks for the suggestion, I've been looking into Ion guns as well. While they seem useful in my end goal, my first build is going to be pretty much the simplest demo fusor I can imagine, with a couple bells and whistles to make it look cool.

Michael,
That does sound very interesting and I look forwards to reading more about it come January.

Thanks all for the welcome,
Curtis