In this space, visitors are invited to post any comments, questions, or skeptical observations about Philo T. Farnsworth's contributions to the field of Nuclear Fusion research.Subject: inner grid construction
Date: Jan 26, 4:00 pm
Poster: Richard HullOn Jan 26, 4:00 pm, Richard Hull wrote:
all,
Gerald Morris started the thread about inner grid construction. This is proabably the most intricate and delicate part of the fusor for we amateur builders.
The classic method using wire, I have described in the beginning on this board, on the HV list serv, and in the two articles I did for the Bell Jar journal and Electric Sparcecraft Journal. Tom Ligon's article in Analog magazine also point to wire grid construction. However, alternate construction techniques are available to the adroit and thoughtful builder.
My post to this BBS just a few days ago mentioned an alternate method for the first three grids. Today I hit on another method after receiving some engineering samples of photoetched sheet metal from Fotofabrication out of Chicago.
They are incredible! For a $300.00 setup/tooling charge they will make any small flat sheet metal part in quantity for prototype or production flat sheet metal parts. You have to see their work to believe it. (they sent nice samples.)
This naturally leads me to think that broad, thin metal rings with pre-located slots in them might allow hand assembly of near perfect geodesics. With a micro torch and a tiny bit of silver solder, they would be ultra stable and nice. The cross section presented to the beams would be far less than wire and the radiative surfaces would be much greater. I will have to investigate this. I'll probably make up a large set to make hand fashioning and assembly easy and work bugs out of the slitting/fitting process, then a small real sized set for test in the fusor. Just thought others might like to check this concept out at their end.
Richard Hull