Neptunium's fusor progress

Current images of fusor efforts, components, etc. Try to continuously update from your name, a current photo using edit function. Title post with your name once only. Change image and text as needed. See first posting for details.
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vince_Darmancier
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Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

here are some of my progress since i started in 2008...

all the parts are ready
fusor parts resized.jpg
the hemisphere cut and welded to the flanges

all the parts ready to go ! almost there!
fusor part 2 resized.jpg
Requesting Sir Richard Hull to begin the review?
maybe a quick look at "Neptunium" https://www.youtube.com/user/Neptuniumcritical
May increase the odds of this project well over 10 years in the making coming slowly to completion.
Next week first plasma .. and unless unforeseen event, first fusion by April 15th..
Thank you all for your time and consideration
Vince/ Neptunium
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

Mandatory self portrait
resized me.jpg
the first plasma . the pressure is 3.4e-3 Torr with 40Kv 7.5 mA power supply
first plasma resized.jpg
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

no neutron detected so far but i am working on the anode. so it should not be much longer ..,.
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

image missing
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Very good work and a nice set up to be sure. All the best.

You are now in the plasma club.

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: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

May 7th 2019, 7:12 pm star mode achieved!
slight increase in radiation upon introducing Deuterium.
The pressure is 3.4X10-4 Torr and i used a Hitek High voltage power supply
set on 40mA and 10Kv. Althought i did not go this high on this video.

This was a first run with a lot more to fix and improve. The wiring on the HV is temporary, the neutron detector need more TLC and the moderator is in the process of being finished.

More work to do but on the right track.

https://www.facebook.com/vince.daryl/vi ... 442864709/
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

I have recently acquire this monster unit .
Its a glassman high voltage -60kv 50mA in 5 modules and i was wondering if anybody has ever seen this unit or worked with it?
its seems to be in good working condition however it trip at what seems to be a low current and i am pretty sure it is not suppose to
It may have suffered a bit during shipping . Ihave fixed some broken connections and solder on new potentiometers.
I have contacted Glassman for a datasheet .
Any ideas?
Glassman HV resized.jpg
Glassman HV  top resized.jpg
HV unit help 002.JPG
thumbnail resized.jpg
Glassman responded with disappointing news..
This was custom made in 1987 so no technical support...
It looks like it sat almost never used for 30 years...
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Richard Hull
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

The real business is done in the lower unit. All the top units are used to get high power, high voltage RF which is fed through the big ugly RF cable out of the unit just above the lower unit.

I bet the lower unit is a giant block of epoxy or other type of polymer with the RF transformer, multipliers,etc., permanently entombed. In the old days this would have been a tank of oil. Let us hope there is no nasty issues with the bottom unit. (carbon tracking, internally)

Negative output is great!

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: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Rex Allers »

I thought I'd share my guesses on the big HV supply. I've been meaning to for a few days but struggled with how to present enough without writing a book.

I've looked at several Glassman HV supplies and I think they tend to share a lot of design concepts. The one I am most familiar with is the ER-Series, much smaller at 300W output. Possibly that is what you have sitting on the bench in the fusor set-up pics.

These are just my opinions, but my thoughts are a good bit different from what Richard has speculated. For one thing, I've never seen or heard of a Glassman HV supply that had potted HV sections. All I'm aware of use open air insulation designs.

As intro to theory, here's a block diagram I drew to show a typical Glassman supply.
Glassman blk diag.png
This is for the ER series but is essentially the same design for other higher power models.

The 3525 is a standard switching mode supply controller chip. These are typically used in the last couple decades. An earlier design like your 1987 unit may use an earlier version like the 3524. These create two digital pulse outputs, out of phase with each other. The frequency of these pulses is constant, probably around 50 kHz. The width of the pulses is adjusted to control the output of the supply.

The switching driver block represents circuits that switch the power in alternating directions across the primary of the transformer. The DC supply block comes from rectifying and filtering the AC mains voltage (with doubling if AC is 115 V). The approximate 310 VDC is what is switched into the transformer primary. The last part of this switching is usually done by a pair of power MOSFETs.

The transformer steps up the 50 kHz pulses of 310 V to an AC output of 10 kV center tapped. The center is grounded so the output is two 5 kVAC lines (relative to ground), 180 deg phase to each other. The 5 kV represents the max supply output voltage. If making lower voltages, these voltages will be proportionally lower.

These two phases and the ground are then sent to a full wave HV rectifier/multiplier that steps up the voltage so that 5 kV in makes the full rated supply voltage as an output.

This link:
http://www.voltagemultipliers.com/html/multipliers.html
has pretty good descriptions of how HV multipliers work.

The number of stages needed in the multiplier is Vout / Vin so for 60 kV out it would be 60/5 = 12 stages.

The block diagram shows sensing for the current through the multiplier and also for the HV output voltage. These signals are typically produced so maximum supply voltage or current produces a sense signal of 10 VDC. These signals go back to the controller for feedback to set the operating voltage and to limit the current. These settings come from the front panel pot settings (not shown as inputs to the controller in the block diagram).

In actual implementations that I am aware of, the current sensing and HV divider feedback signals are actually implemented within the HV multiplier module.

Most of the Glassman models are made in one rack mount box. The HV multiplier section is housed in a plastic insulating box and the rest of the circuitry is on one large board. The feedback signals to the controller chip and also to drive the metering of output voltage and current, plus the input settings of the front panel pots, and any protection shutdown, are all implemented in a number of op amps on the main circuit board.

Here's a picture of the transformer in an ER supply.
ER HV Transformer.jpg

In this 300 W configuration the transformer has two secondary coils on the ferrite core. (Note: The white box in the background is the HV multiplier module.) All the transformers I've seen in Glassman supplies thus far share this same size ferrite core, a square shape about 2.5 inches on a side. In the next model step up of output power, there would be two switching drive sections into two transformers with only one winding on the secondary of each. These two secondaries would be connected just like the two coils on one transformer to make two out-of-phase drives for the multiplier.

--- Now on to what might be going on in your big 60 kV 50 mA supply.

I've never seen one in person but pictures seem to indicate that some implementations put the main controller / driver section in a one box and a big multiplier section in a separate rack-mount box.

Here are some pictures I saved several years back (I think from an ebay listing). The supply is listed as EX040P025 so 40 kV at 25 mA or a max power of 1 kW out.
1 EX main FP.jpg
2 EX main BP.jpg
3 EX multi FP.jpg
4 EX multi BP.jpg

So this supply is in two sections and they both have a pair of sockets like on your big supply. There was no picture with the pair interconnected, but my interpretation is that the main box with meters and controls contains drivers and transformers to produce the two out-of phase (max)5 kV signals that are connected to the second section with jumpers. That second section contains the multiplier to produce the HV output. It also contains the voltage and current sense circuits to provide feedback and monitor signals back to the main unit through the small multi-pin connectors.

And here are a couple more pics that show the internals of that 2nd box.
5 EX multi in top.jpg
6 EX multi in side.jpg

I can't say I fully understand it. In the first top view you can see the two inputs feeding with well insulated wire into terminals on the module. The top board has a lot of high voltage resistors, so I assume this is HV sense. There is a lot more of it in what looks like 4 sections, than I expected. Even with the side view I can't see anything that looks like the diodes of a multiplier, but I've never seen one up close to examine the details.

If based on nothing else than the back panel's two highish voltage input sockets (J1 and J2) and the standard-looking HV output socket (J3), I have to assume that this is a HV multiplier section.

Now in your -60 kV 50 mA big unit. That's 3 kW output or 3 times the one above. Your back panel pic seems to have the main top unit removed. To me it seems that if just that top unit was paired with the next-to-bottom unit we would have something very like the ebay pics I just discussed. So my guess is the next-to-bottom unit is the multiplier section and its output (the fat black coax) is the supply HV output.

So we have two more sections in the stack between the main top and the proposed multiplier. There are two wires that I propose are dual phase 5 kV power drive to the multiplier. They seem to daisy chain vertically through these two additional units. Each of these have their own AC mains input. I think these are both making more 5 kV in parallel with the main unit's 5 kV to allow putting more current into the multiplier. If I'm right, I would expect they are taking inputs from the main unit (I guess on those small multi-pin connectors (J1) that are probably the same as the A and B outputs from the controller chip on the main board.

Now, what's in that bottom box. The name of the supply says it is for X-ray. There is a big circular connector with blue insulation. My guess is that connector has 3 internal pins/sockets. This is a negative supply, hence for an x-ray tube cathode. The cathode also has a filament. My guess is one of the things in the bottom section is a current source for the filament -- well insulated for the HV. The front panel controls of this section probably set this filament drive. There is some chance it can switch the HV on or off but maybe not.

The only connection I can see between this bottom section and the supply stuff above it is the thick black cable, which I think is just jumpering the HV output from the multiplier section (next to bottom) into the bottom section. My guess is you can take the HV from the multiplier output and ignore or remove that bottom x-ray section.

Here's a link to a doc I made about making HV cables for use with Glassman supply HV sockets. (Also has a bit of comparisons with Spellman.)
http://www.xertech.net/pub/Glassman%20HV%20cable.pdf

So that's my thoughts on your big supply. This is probably not the forum section where we should be discussing this supply details. If you want to talk more on this subject in the forum it should probably move to a more appropriate section. I'm saving this post locally, so I could repost in another thread if desired.

Vince, if you want to talk more details off-forum, send me a message using the email link in my profile and type in your preferred email addy I'll reply with mine for direct discussion.

This doesn't explain why your supply might be tripping unexpectedly but hopefully isn't far off from describing what you have.

- Rex
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

Rex,
Your assessment is very accurate. this unit is built much like the EX040P025 and has very similar features.
The power switch were not operational and both voltage and current potentiameters were damaged durring shipping so i`ve replace them
HV unit help 001.JPG
The general power seems fine for now but i cannot get the HV to power up normally other than mechanically pushing the magnetic contact

HV unit help 005.JPG
That action powers every module and cooling fans. but the current generated keep tripping with the first spark at about 20Kv.
Of course this is the wrong way to do it, but it tells me that this unit might be fully operational if only i could figure out how to power the HV section.
without my hands or a tool in it as much as possible!
I am not sure whats going on my 40kv positive unit has never done anything like that. I also have a 10kv 40mA from hitek that does the same silly nonsense at 10mA...



The lower section is in fact a current limiter and feedback to the top master module. but even without it, it can still trip and shut down the high voltage.
In any case Thank you for your expertise I think i could get this to work eventually after blowing a few dozen fuses, but your help is greatly appreciated, and this is the last obstacle between me and fusion! so i am getting a little inpatient you know! :)
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Many of these custom or even stock HV supplies have all sorts of lockouts for customers to wire trip switches in cages etc to prevent operation if a cage door is open. Arcing is a possible killer of a supply and will certainly shut a supply down immediately. Again, no real HV supply ever made in a professional scenario is designed to work a flaming arc. Some can't survive a flaming arc drawn.

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: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Dennis P Brown »

If it is tripping because of a run away current, what ballast resistance are you using in your fusor circuit? My system would surge over 100 ma at startup but I had a simple x-former and diodes so not an issue; I did have a ballast resistor in my circuit and it was both the ohm and wattage Richard recommended but a fusor can act much as a dead short for a fraction of a second. That can trip any feedback system for PS that have that feature so that might be the issue.
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Bob Reite »

Got to be built like for old school tube transmitters in which tubes have arcs that are dead shorts for an instant, yet don't kill the tube as long as it doesn't last too long.
The more reactive the materials, the more spectacular the failures.
The testing isn't over until the prototype is destroyed.
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by John Futter »

I have no knowledge of this unit
but
many x-ray supplies are setup to turn off when the the tube arcs to save the tube
other supplies notably Spellman have arc counters on ordinary supplies to protect the diodes and capacitors in the multiplier stack from overheating from dV/dt events.

As has been already asked what value is your ballast resistor ie somewhere between 50kohms and 200kohms. If you do not have one read up on what you need before you destroy your power supplies
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

No this is not a ballast issue. i am not at that point yet. i have read on ballast for the current surge and i am still working on that.
The HV does not power on its own i have to physically hold the magnetic contact to get it to power up.
I have another Glassman positive 40Kv that works great and never trip even when starting up vacuum tube or with a spark gap..although it might have an internal protection, it does not have a HV power switch.
This larger unit on the other hand is capable of 50mA and when set to maximum current trips with the first weak 20kv spark.
and thats only when holding the connector down .
You might be right about the arcing protection, but for now i am just trying to get it to power up normally without holding down the connection inside.
Rex suggested looking at other Glassman units and i should take the time to do that, their probably wired the same way..
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

As I mentioned before, you may have a plug or barrier strip on the back of those units. Some HV supplies offer that remote safety switch option. As such, you may have to short two pins on a plug or barrier strip before HV will allow that relay to pull in. If this is the case, an owners manual would mention that fact. I own a Glassman with that feature.

Old Universal Voltronics supplies also had a number of tricky gottchas that would not allow the supply to power up. Most notably, if the filament in the HV "ON" light was blown, the supply would not come on.

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
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by John Futter »

By golly
Richard I had forgotten the rules for x-ray supplies
yes you had to monitor the HV on /enabled and the x-rays on lamp currents to make sure that these were lit when activated otherwise the supply would not let x-rays be produced.
All a bit inane in this modern day of LEDS but we still have to put this circuitry in even for
LEDS.
yes the interlocks need to be in the right logic state to let the psu operate there well could be two or three circuits two being short to enable and one open to enable with all having to be true for the big relay to pull in
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Yes, when I was in Tesla coiling, one fellow in our group was tickled while monkeying with his Tesla coil's primary circuit due to the variac, turned down, still supplying 1 or 2 volts to his high voltage 14,400 volt transformer. Determined to never let that happen again, he rigged up a micro-switch under his seat cushion at his coil's master power control panel. This meant his butt had to be in the seat, away from his Tesla coil, before line AC would even reach the coil's main panel's on-off switch and contactor!

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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Fusion claim and neutron detection

Post by vince_Darmancier »

Hi everyone.
Today was a great day as i received a neutron counter !
neutron detector 004 resized.jpg
it is rather old (1986) from Texas Nuclear, but still appear functional. The background is about 1 neutron every 5 to 7 minutes.
This unit has the detector permanently lodged inside the moderator (big black sphere) so i cannot separate the two.
neutron detector 003 resized.jpg
Although it has not been calibrated in a while, I just wanted a reliable neutron detection device so it is sufficient for my purpose.
neutron detector resized.jpg
So i put it to the test and here is my result.

i vacuum down the chamber and applied high voltage to the grid (just air)
a few neutron popped up around 10 to 15 Kv but stopped beyond that. the xrays went wild over 20 kv and i beleive some (2 or 3 ) triggered the neutron counter.

i then pushed to vacuum down to 1.6x10-4 Torr and introduced a tiny bit of Deuterium.
when the pressure stabilized to 1 micron i turned on the high voltage which raised the pressure a bit to 20 to 30 micron .
after a few seconds it moved up to about 50 micron (due to heating)

at this point the voltage reads about 20 Kv at 25 mA and the neutron counter went up to 200 counts..

beautiful bright star mode too!

I should mention that the moderator ball is about 3 feet from the fusor.

because the fusor gets so hot so fast i stopped it to record these data.

I tried again and just under 20Kv at 25mA the total counts went up from 209 to over 300 in a few seconds..

I will have a video soon that will explain all of this in detail...
for now i am waiting for that thing to cool off a bit.
last friday (before the neutron counter delivery) i have detected the 20Mev peak with my gamma spectroscopy system.
I hope these are all good sign and i will be happy to provide more info as requested!
Vince
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Paul_Schatzkin »

Vince,

I was poking around in the forums this evening and just discovered that the images from your first posts in this thread are among those that got disappeared when our previous ISP mangled the site before we moved it.

If it's not too much trouble and assuming you still have access to the images, would you please go through your first posts and restore the images?

I have elevated your user status to "senior" which should give you the access you need to edit old posts.

I am making this special request because you are among the more recently active members, so your posts are showing frequently in the "Active Topics" listings. It would be helpful for newer members to be able to see the images that accompany the posts that track your excellent progress from newbie to neutrons.

Thanks,

--PS
Paul Schatzkin, aka "The Perfesser" – Founder and Host of Fusor.net
Author of The Boy Who Invented Television: 2023 Edition – https://amz.run/6ag1
"Fusion is not 20 years in the future; it is 60 years in the past and we missed it."
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

i may be missing a few pictures but i should still have most of them Paul..i will get on it as soon as possible..

Here is the neutron count from today`s run
I did struggle to get it up to 20Kv because it was getting too hot and untill i get to that value the neutron detector remain silent.
count resized.jpg
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Rex Allers »

Paul and Vince,

I have looked at Vince's posts in this thread.
This is not the "typical" image attachment blight that has been affecting large numbers of posts from prior to the move.

Vince is posting these images as links rather than the recommended uploading of files to the forum.

I looked at the html source coming to my browser for these messages. The "image" tags in the posts just look like text in my browser, but when I look at the html source encoding, they are actually very very long links to a file on
"lh3.googleusercontent -dot- com/..."

The image he just posted of the counter read-out is also done that same way (a link to google). I think this is just the very old problem of using links rather than uploading a file. The content on the other end (google in this case) seems to have gone away. (Aged out?)

This is not a case of the 'broken links or missing uploaded files' on the fusor forum server that we are trying to repair.
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

I am sorry if my pictures are causing issues I thought i was following the guide line of the link for pictures posting...
At the beginning, I did struggle to upload pictures as a normal upload and this method seemed to work..
Please let me know how to fix it and i gladly will !
Thanks Rex and Paul

On a different note, here is my latest fusion run !
star mode resized.jpg
yes the clock is still in summer time i forgot to change it
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

I am not seeing one single picture that Vince has ever posted here!! including today's image! Are they jpeg images? All I get is a circle with a bar in it. and a large blank area. is anyone else seeing images?

Also, at this moment in time, I notice all good images in other forums here are very slow to load.

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: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by John Futter »

Vince
It is not hard to post pics
you have to process your pics so that they are 1024 x 768 pixels
this can be done by using freeware like "irfanview" (https://www.irfanview.com/main_download_engl.htm) under image/ resize resample
and then up load and make it inline

images bigger in size than what I have indicated start to do different things and do not add to the resolution of the average 20" computer monitor.

using outside hosts for pics tends to leave posts in limbo when the host dissappears or the poster doesn't pay to keep it there
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