Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA

Post by Richard Hull »

Nice CAD work. Very professional. Fabulous images of what the finished product will resemble. Boy, times, they do change.

I took two classes in engineering drafting while in college in the mid-sixties. We joked about the drafting requirements, saying that should we fail as electronics engineers, we could always find work with International Havester designing self-propelled manure spreaders.

I bought the drafting table and a super nice set of drafting instruments and used them into the early 70's for my own work and pleasure. I still pull them out on occasion, but tend to use simple Computer drafting programs for mechanical stuff and schematic programs for electronic circuit printouts. I have never considered CAD, as I can doodle out a 3-D mechanical impression and see issues develop on that front. Without free access to CAM, I always felt CAD, by itself, a bit over blown. CAD-CAM need to be fully wed and implemented together. My thoughts.

As the brain ossifies, I currently only attempt to learn that which is supremely valuable immediately which is free of any cost. As I am retired, the only new stuff I need to know is that which presents itself in the press of advancing my own personal efforts. I don't have to impress any one person or employer any more. I have a lifetime accumulation of hard won knowledge, about 60% of which is useful now only for campfire stories about how it was in the "old days". This sort of specific, focused knowledge and its application, which the young folks here strive for now, will be part of their campfire story collection in later life, as well. There will always and forever be "this new thing" leaving the bulk of your past efforts and hard won experience, a relic on the trash pile of what was once the cat's pajamas.

All that past effort in life, as you advanced, served to put bread on the table, pay for the car, etc. However, just as the bread ultimately ended up in the sewer system as consumed waste product and the car, in the junk yard, having ferried the family around so valiently, so hot, current, specific skill sets in focused endevors will also fade from being of any real value in future.

This is why I can see the sage, yet sad, Yogi Berra quote in my closing salutation as truly humorous on many levels.

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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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA

Post by Andrew Robinson »

Glad to see you pushing into some newer CAD software Andrew. Nice attention to detail. I keep trying to reinforce the usefulness and application of CAD here. With your level of past attention to detail, I know I don't need to try to convince you. I know it can be a daunting task to model everything but very rewarding in the end. We're now pushing into the 1000's of hours on our current model. I'd be happy to talk CAD with you. I'm sure we both have some tips and tricks we can share. Keep it up and as always, I continue to look forward to your progress.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA

Post by Andrew Robinson »

Andrew,

You may be particularly interested in the thermal and flow characteristics we're modeling currently off your original design. Note the continuous feature via 3D sketches to enable the flow and thermal simulations of the grid. This was an early (and incomplete) 3D test and unfortunately I'm not at the office currently so I don't have our updated models or data to share at the moment, but like I said, send me a message sometime. We're investigating heavily into this area and building on your previous success. I would love to share data between teams.
Capture.PNG
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA

Post by Andrew Robinson »

Hey Andrew,

I fired off a few emails to you, but I'm not sure if I have the correct email address. I wont post it here in plain text due to crawlers but are you still at the university/using that email address? Looking forward to hearing back from you.

Cheers,
Andrew
I can wire anything directly into anything! I'm the professor!
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I'm here(same address), I sent you a response via email.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

The fusor has been tested with the new molecular drag pump and dry diaphragm pump. The MDP was mounted to the high vacuum solenoid valve on the fusor and was running off of it's built in AC power supply, while the diaphragm pump was running off of the fusor's 24Vdc supply. Vacuum performance was generally good. The solenoid valve between the fusor and MDP was opened at ~100s while the fusor was at ~100mTorr, pump down into the high 1e-4 range occurred with generally good performance. Deuterium pressure was held at ~8mtorr and the fusor generated ~2.3E6n/s at 40kV and 17.6mA, also generally about the same as running with the turbo station.
fusor-mdp.jpg
MDP mounted on fusor
SAM_5865a.jpg
Plasma
SAM_5866a.jpg
My last deuterium tank had run out of pressure, having only ~90psi when I got it, it lasted about a year of intermittent use. New deuterium tank has ~1750psi in it and should last a significant time. The tank is now mounted inside the fusor frame(more compact and better protected) and all VCR fittings have been upgraded to copper o-rings rather then the nylon washers I was using for testing.
SAM_5870a.jpg
The fusor's going to be hooked back up to the old turbo station until I can get the new one with the MDP built though.
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Re: Mark3 operation and upgrades

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

A recent upgrade to the mark 3 has replaced the 6 way conflat cube with an 8 way kimball physics vacuum hexagon. The hexagon is considerably smaller and more compact, and has 2 more ports then the cube. The hexagon is connected to the core with a brazed ceramic isolator with copper conflat o-rings, which replaced the PEEK plastic isolator with viton o-ring. In addition the hexagon mounts an MKS 901P with integrated display, x-ray shielded 1.33CF viewport, deuterium inlet valve, Pfeiffer EVI 005 vacuum valve, an electron collector probe on a BNC feedthrough, and a germanium viewport for IR measurements. This upgrade replaced 1 plastic insulator, 2x 2.75CF viton o-rings, 1x KF40 Viton o-ring, and 1x KF16 o-ring with all metal parts, is about 4kg lighter then the previous unit, and significantly more compact, which will allow a diaphragm pump / turbo pump system to be integrated into the frame. The MKS 901P is the RS485 version which will allow several vacuum gauges and the turbopump to talk on the same bus.

The Pfeiffer EVI 005 valve was the one tested in this post
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12155

The deuterium inlet valve was welded with this procedure:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=12284

CAD designs on the hexagon are attached below
vac-hex.jpg
vac-hex-half.jpg
6way-frame.jpg
Pictures of the completed hexagon
SAM_6445.JPG
SAM_6448.JPG
Comparison to the old vacuum cube:
SAM_6452.JPG
Vacuum tests of the new system are very encouraging, the lower conductance of the smaller valve is offset by the removal of the viton and plastic; the system now archives considerably better vacuum performance, and will max out the gauge at below 1e-5 torr.
First pump down with bakeout starting at ~700s and pressure rise with valves closed.
6way-vac.jpg
6way-rise.jpg
In addition a new digital control system is in the process of being designed, which will replace the older analog feedback controllers with an arduino controller and provide a touchscreen display for monitoring and control
SAM_6456.JPG
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Richard Hull »

Fabulous upgrade Andrew!! One of the better systems out there and a fusioneer that has been around a while. Thanks for the upgrade. I am envious of the valved off 1000+ second hold to about 50 microns. I am at 100 microns after about 360 seconds, but I have operated like this for about 9 years now.

Again, nice stuff! ( as an old friend used to comment to me).

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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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

Latest upgrade progress:

Diaphragm pump, rough vacuum gauge, and turbo pump to be installed on fusor frame.
SAM_6520.JPG
CAD design of mounting position:
turbo-mount.png
Vacuum gauges and turbo pump will share an rs485 bus for communication. The USB to RS485 dongle used for turbo pump testing is the following:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010K ... UTF8&psc=1

Pump actual speed, set speed, and controller current, voltage, and power.
turbo-test.jpg
Matlab control program for pfeiffer turbo pump:
Pfeiffer_TC100_rs485_plot_data.zip
(2.27 KiB) Downloaded 501 times
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

More upgrades for the fusor:

Upgrades for mounting internal vacuum pumps, custom backing and mounting bracket for the TPD011 turbo pump
SAM_6850.JPG
Front and back of bracket, replaces the NW16 backing connector and provides 4x 10-32 tapped threads on a 1.75"x97mm pattern
SAM_6849.JPG
Turbo pump and diaphragm backing pump
SAM_6852.JPG
Mounting plate to hold vacuum pumps
vacuum-system.png
Locations of vacuum pump within fusor frame
vacuum-system-location.png
Thermal camera mounting system on vacuum hexagon to observe grid temperature
vacuum-hex-optics.png
Right angle bending mirror
SAM_6853.JPG
Optics path
optics-path.png
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

The new CNC'd mounting plate for the internal vacuum pumps have arrived and the turbo and diaphragm pump are installed within the fusor frame.

Diaphragm pump, turbo pump and MKS-901P gauge for roughing line pressure measurement are mounted on the aluminum plate.
SAM_6860.JPG
Plate mounts on top of fusor
SAM_6862.JPG
Vacuum line connects turbo pump to foreline solenoid valve
SAM_6863.JPG
Pumps powered up and backing vacuum gauge added to the RS485 bus
SAM_6866.JPG
Since both gauges are now on the RS485 bus, backing vacuum and high vacuum can be measured simultaneously, pump down was measured with the turbo at standby speed, at full speed the pumping rate increases. On standby, ultimate vacuum is below 1e-5 torr.
dual-pumpdown.jpg
Testing of the thermal camera was also successful.
O202057287.jpg
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Richard Hull »

Wow! You are already in the show-piece class and I sense a move into museum grade exposition. This is how it is to be done if one is "long-term serious" about making a world class fusor system and sticking with it. Great work Andrew! Turbo standby mode is more than adequate to do fusion........

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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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Very impressive system. When money is no object, one can create a very professional system!

Your thermal camera might need optical filtering to reduce the intensity since that filament will be in the thousand centigrade range. So you should keep that in mind to provide room for any such pre-lens filtering. Also, noise might be an issue from the EMF.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

The thermal camera is viewing the grid during operation, my grid is liquid cooled so it will remain at fairly low temperatures as long as there is coolant flow. There is a little EMI noise on the video, though I have not yet cleaned up the wiring and the video is being sent over twisted pair wire.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I have recently added an x-ray camera to one of the fusor's viewports to image the locations electrons are striking the shell through bremsstrahlung intensity distributions.

The x-ray sensor is a Hamamatsu S10814 CsI crystal needle array coated on top of a fiber optic plate collimator/shield coupled to a 1700x1200 CCD detector, controlled by a C9266 USB readout box. This is the industrial equivalent of the modern digital dental x-ray sensors. The sensor has 20x20um pixels, 42x30mm size, 20Lp/mm resolution, and probably on the order of 60 LSB/mR sensitivity.
http://dtsheet.com/doc/569698/hamamatsu-c9266-04
https://www.hamamatsu.com/resources/pdf ... d1124e.pdf
IMG_20190201_221822889a.jpg
The sensor gets mounted on a thorlabs optical assembly holding a 1.5mm molybdenum pinhole looking through a Pyrex glass viewport which has negligible attenuation for the more energetic x-rays.
IMG_20190201_195306450a.jpg
IMG_20190201_194536571a.jpg
IMG_20190201_194546131a.jpg
The first x-ray images from the camera are shown below
xray_img.png
Remember that my fusor has magnetic deflector yokes on 4 of the nipples, shown circled in red.
SAM_4425a.jpg
http://www.rtftechnologies.org/physics/ ... shield.htm

These magnetic deflectors were installed to prevent the electron beam emitted through the grid openings from striking and damaging the optical viewport. Instead of striking the viewport, the beam is deflected into the wall of the nipple. In this case, x-rays from electrons hitting both the near and far nipple walls are visible, along with the x-ray attenuation shadow due to the grid insulator and molybdenum field control cap. The far electron beam is striking the top of the nipple.
x-ray-fig.png
Rotating the far deflector field 90 degrees moves the electron beam strike point from the top to the side of the nipple
xray_img4.png
Rotating the far deflector field 180 degrees moves the electron beam strike point from the top to the bottom of the nipple
xray_img3.png
Removing the far deflector from the nipple causes the electron beam to illuminate an area of the far nipple behind the grid
xray_img5.png
In this case the grid wires and insulator are more clearly visible
x-ray-fig2.png
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Nice apparatus! A side possibility; you can get single crystal silicon wafers super cheap (even select from the company what plane it was cut - 001, 011 etc.). Set it at the correct angle relative to your camera (maybe a micrometer rotation mount) and use it to get specific energies from the electron x-rays. The wafer need not be in the vacuum just line of sight to the x-ray source. Closer, of course, the better.

A side thought: one could "focus' the x-rays by placing the wafer on a circular vacuum ring and apply a moderate vacuum to deform the wafer into a spherical surface. This will weakly focus grazing x-rays off its front surface to "image" the source and provide an energy spectrum.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

I'm planning to do something similar for energy. I have some CZT detectors which I'll mount on an x-y drive to position over the part of the image that I want to probe the energy at.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

Some upgrades to the x-ray camera now include:
Diffrent molybdenum pinhole sizes 1.5mm, 1.0mm, 0.5mm to sharpen the image
IMG_20190202_184858028a.jpg
A 3D printed sensor holder to allow zooming in by varying the distance from the sensor to the pinhole
IMG_20190202_185341488a.jpg
IMG_20190202_185019702a.jpg
Picture taken with a 1.5mm pinhole for 30s:
1.5mm 30s.png
Picture taken with a 1.0mm pinhole for 30s:
1.0mm 30s.png
Picture taken with a 0.5mm pinhole for 60s:
0.5mm 60s.png
Picture taken with a 0.5mm pinhole for 60s (brightened):
0.5mm 60s bright.png
Reducing the pinhole size noticeably sharpens the image at the expense of intensity.
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Andrew Seltzman »

New upgrades on the Mark 3:

New more compact cooling system using 3d-printed components and including more compact coolant pressure and flow measurements
PXL_20230603_215722656.jpg
PXL_20230603_215716009.jpg
New grid assembly with 3d printed insulator box to allow a more compact design:
PXL_20230603_220122280.jpg
PXL_20230603_220052130.jpg
grid_rev5_assembly section.jpg
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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Richard Hull »

Very nice work. We all like to catch up on making out material better or better mounted for control purposes.

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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Re: Mark3 operation 3e-4 torr / quad ion source @ -40kV, 1mA-9mA

Post by Dennis P Brown »

Beyond good - extremely professional. What is your ultimate objective for measuring the x-ray energies from a fusor?
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