Fusion Message Board

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: Strike Two
Date: Aug 31, 12:47 pm
Poster: Stephen Coley

On Aug 31, 12:47 pm, Stephen Coley wrote:

Even if things are not in the proper parameters for "multipacting" I'm assuming I should see some activity in the chamber. Over the weekend I turned on my latest attempt and got nothing, nada. So heres what I tried, small chamber with grids connected to an 8kv, 1.5ma power supply, pumped to a very mild vacuum(very mild). distance between the inner and outer grids about 1.5 centimeters, quite small. I had thought I would see some arcing between the grids or some other energy manifestation somewhere in the system. I did this experiment expecting the grids to be destroyed, but my powersupply died instead, reason unknown unless it died of old age. There were several minutes of operation before the power supply went with no observable results whatsoever. I'm a firm believer in testing "controlled failures" during the development of a project, but this has me stumped. My only assumption is that I was losing power through the feed through (admittedly not well designed) but there was no post operation evidence that this was happening. I will redo the experiment shortly with better mounting for the chamber providing a better feedthrough and vacuum connection, I still want to see what happens when a grid melts!