At the request of The Perfessor I put two neutron generator articles on line at my Bell Jar Web site: www.tiac.net/users/shansen/belljar
These are in Acrobat format and can be found by following the link to the on-line articles.
Both of the articles date from late 1997. The first article (Neutrons and Neutron Generators) is a general overview with some detail on devices I've been playing with (but not with deuterium - yet). The second article (The Farnsworth/Hirsch Fusor) is the first fusor article in tBJ and it's Richard Hull's description of his initial fusor experiments.
I've been toying with various accelerator-type devices since the late 1960s but have never put together anything that actually produced neutrons. I finally broke down this week and bought a 50 liter bottle of deuterium. Most of the gas delivery system is built (using a low pressure reservoir and fuel injector valve) and I am putting the final touches on a water cooled anode structure for my crossed field tube (an early version of which is described in the first article). For those interested in more info on J.D. Gow's crossed-field neutron tube, check out patent 2, 967,943 which can be viewed on the US Patent & Trademark Office's Web site. It's pretty simple but does require a high vacuum pump as it's operating pressure is just a few mTorr.
Now, all's I need is a detector. Sound familiar?
Steve
Created on Sunday, February 25, 2001 2:40 PM EDT by Steve Hansen