Neptunium's fusor progress

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Richard Hull
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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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Dennis P Brown
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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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Bob Reite
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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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vince_Darmancier
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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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Richard Hull
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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
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 »

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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Richard Hull
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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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vince_Darmancier
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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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Paul_Schatzkin
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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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vince_Darmancier
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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.
Rex Allers
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vince_Darmancier
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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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Richard Hull
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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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vince_Darmancier
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

got it .... Let me know if it works

I was a bit suspicious about the neutron count so i moved the detector to different spots, I also installed this lead shielding around the fusor
and this metal plate that should limit the amount of x rays reaching the neutron detector.
Its pretty sensitive to neutron but i dont know how sensitive to xrays and gamma .
None of these action affected the count (except the distance ) only when i flush the fusor with air or helium will the count stop completely!!.
shield resized.jpg
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Rex Allers »

Vince,
Looking good on your fusion efforts and also nice work on replacing all those old and new image links with uploaded files.
Rex Allers
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vince_Darmancier
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

Awesome ! thank you!!!
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Richard Hull
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Richard Hull »

Vince, I have viewed your recent video that you PM'd me. You are doing fusion and I have logged your name into the neutron club. Make sure and share you video's URL here so that others here may see it. I have seen this video grow and expand in a manner that shows, Vince's steady pace towards his win.

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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vince_Darmancier
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by vince_Darmancier »

This video/post and many hours of work and research, got me a spot in the prestigious and highly sought after neutron club ! i am very proud of this distinction as it reflects on a lot of pain, money, focus and labor .this is not the end though!
Rather the beginning of many more challenges and a better, ever refined understanding of mother nature`s laws !
Activation is my next challenge ! Fusor.net has not seen the last of me !
thank you for all the support in this exciting journey!
best


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzrQ_es9kqA
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Mark Rowley
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Re: Neptunium's fusor progress

Post by Mark Rowley »

Congrats Vince!
As always, very cool video.

Mark Rowley
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