Thank you for this. Your honesty is extremely refreshing. First, your description of what you're building is accurate. There are so many fusor videos where someone will exclaim their demo fusor is a working fusion reactor. Second, you willingness to show your mistakes and put yourself out there earned you a subscriber today. We need more of this. I'm excited to watch your channel grow. Keep at the fusor. You WILL get there.
When it comes to the obvious leak in your system, i recommend a thick layer of hard, heat resistant rubber for the sealing rings. I used those for my fusor, and it took 4 days for it to leak all the pressure out. A good fusor is very dependant on a high and good vacuum.
Great stuff! I appreciate seeing the occasional failure: we learn more from it. Glad I happened upon this. Definitely a big leak: it should be able to hold a vacuum when the pump is turned off. Industry standard for leak-checking is a spray bottle filled with water and dish soap. For positive-pressure containers: spray it on fittings and if it bubbles, you have a leak. But this doesn't work so well with vacuum systems. Thankfully, since your chamber is glass, you can probably see bubbles from the outside (a leak will pull in the soapy water and hopefully they will make visible bubbles). I haven't actually done this with vacuums though, so it might be difficult. My biggest concern is the gasket, so check all around that and spray on both the top and bottom of the gasket. A slight imperfection or scratch in the metal surface could cause a significant leak. My second concern is the tapped hole that was overdrilled. If it turns out too bad, it might still be salvageable by using liquid pipe dope (make sure to get a kind that will actually harden) as well as the pipe tape. Although I don't know how well the liquid pipe dope works on a vacuum. Regarding outgassing (and holding at low pressures): The pump and the tube it came with are probably fine, although if you put a valve between them and the tank, you can check by closing it before turning off the pump. Pumps can usually hold a bit of vacuum when they are turned off (even my cheap $100 one). I'm not sure what the white plastic pipe is, but if it's PVC/CPVC you'll want to replace it. PVC is terrible for vacuums. Teflon or UHMWPE or JB weld would be preferred if you need plastic. The standard JB weld is surprisingly good for vacuum systems (I've used it on 10^-7 tor systems and Thought Emporium has used it to good extent). For other materials, you can look up outgassing properties by searching "NASA Outgassing Database". As a rough rule of thumb, you want something with a TML
Hey, nice video! (I know I'm late but) I'm planning on building the same design - the instructions say to use a 4¼ hole saw bit to cut the aluminum bar stock but yours looks bigger than that. Can you tell me what size you used? Thanks! Again, nice video!
What I did to save myself some effort was buy two of these 6 inch diameter, 1/2 inch thick aluminum disks from McMaster-Carr www.mcmaster.com/1610T56-1610T147/ In retrospect, I think the surface finish on these disks is a part of my issue holding a vacuum though. They're a pretty rough finish, so it might be advisable to find something with a smoother finish or machine them down a bit to remove all the irregularities yourself, if you have access to the tools to do so.
At least here in the United States they are THE main vendor for raw materials for one-off engineering projects. Talk to any machine shop that makes one-off stuff (i.e., not a factory that's ordering massive stock in bulk) and I'm sure they order from McMaster-Carr. They're not cheap, but they're a very serious, professional vendor. I've used them for both personal projects and work for over 10 years now.
Great vid; I love that you show failure when it happens. Others have probably mentioned this already, but epoxy can outgas a lot for a long time after it seems cured. That might be what’s killing your vacuum.
Don’t know if you’ve tried it again, but the setup looks like it should work, but I’d question your gaskets and pump. Use stiffer gaskets, with a gasket sealant, and a pump rated to get down to like 1.5 micron for good measure. Also what kind of voltage output are you getting from your hardware? 50kV to 100kV should get you a good one.
Hi! I am a IB student from the Netherlands. First of all I appreciate your honesty and you are totally right about how prototypes never work perfectly first try, I myself am building a Fusor for a school project and my question is if you perfected you're prototype and are willing to have a online meeting for me to interview you and possibly give me tips for my own fusor demo . I hope to hear back from you! Thank you in advance and kind regards, Jayden Beesemer IB MYP 5
Hi Jayden! I have not had a chance to revisit this project yet, so I do not have any further insight than what you see in the video, unfortunately. There are many other people who are far more knowledgeable about fusors than I am, though. I do not consider myself anywhere near an expert on this topic yet. Some people have left very good suggestions about what to improve in the comments here and there are a number of other good videos and websites with info on demo fusors. Good luck with your project!
Just a few things. If you need to use epoxy just use "JB Weld" as it's trusted amongst UHV community. Test your rotary pump directly to see what vacuum it's capable of. For that size chamber you likely only need 15-30kV, the higher the voltage you will need better vacuum due to arcing within the chamber. Your tube connected to your pump is very long and could be outgassing.
I think it's the interaction of a few different things, but I'd say the main reason is convection due to heating. Plasma gets hot and rises, but because it's already plasma, it's conductive and the arc moves with it, because it's the path of least resistance.
the fusor is completely fine i believe, and i think your powersupply is good as well, the vacuum pump will not cut it though,as you can see it wasn’t able to bring it down anywhere near it should for fusion to occur. also check for leaks
I agree with the comment suggesting that you probably have a leak. I think you should try a couple simple things before you give up on this. First, I would put a good valve in front of the pump. Then you can close it and turn off the pump to test your vacuum. Second, I think using some kind of vacuum grease on the seal will help you. Lastly, if all you want is a 'star in a jar', maybe you should try installing a second gas feedthrough and filling the camber with an inert gas, like helium or neon in order to aim for a glow discharge.
Aaaaaaa all that stray inductance on the ZVS. Please use shorter wires between the output of the zvs and the flyback/capacitors :) (this isn’t why it didn’t work though) The end result is pretty cool even though it doesn’t work. It has a cool spiral jacobs ladder effect!
Yeah, that ZVS driver was built a long time ago, back when I was way less knowledge and was afraid to make more permanent connections because I was worried about killing flybacks all the time. Which I did, because I didn't know what I was doing, haha. Anyway, I'm planning to build a better and also much higher power ZVS driver at some point in the near future.
@@CoilLabs Nice! yeah I just put my ZVS (incl rectifier, smoothing, and gate supply, the only wires sticking out are the mains plug from my variac to it and the mains plug for my gate driver) neatly and compactly in to a box. Regretted it shortly after when I killed the 2 sets of IGBTs in quick succession...
@@CoilLabs look at snipex_ he is master of zvs i think he will help you . but i would build somethink like this not zvs ua-cam.com/video/3X2Rr2S34dw/v-deo.html hope it will help you
That's cool! Yeah, I want to build something way more powerful that I can use for a lot of different projects. Hopefully make a video about that at some point, once I've designed whatever it's going to be.
It looks like that there is no vacuum grease on on the rubber rings between the glass and the aluminium plates. You need to apply a lot of high vacuum grease on both sides of the two rubber rings because the aluminium and the glass tube are not smooth. The fact that the vacuum gauge jumps so fast to zero as soon as you disable the vacuum pump clearly indicates a leak. I think that the vacuum hose and pump should be good enough in order to let the demo fusor work properly.
You're right, the surfaces of the glass and aluminum definitely aren't smooth enough and that's definitely a problem. The vacuum grease is something I've seen a lot of conflicting opinions on, for this particular application, though. I'm general, you're absolutely right, it would help it seal, but in this particular, I've seen people say it's actually detrimental, because the high heat and strong electric field can actually cause the grease to outgas significantly and just make the situation worse, so that's why I tried without it.
@@CoilLabs Avoiding vacuum grease in a real fusor is indeed necessary, but that requires quality high vacuum equipment with for example metal on metal seals. This design from Makezine just uses simple components which require the use of vacuum grease. I have also build a demo fusor from the Makezine design and it works fine with quality vacuum grease.
Many different parts were bought/acquired over time and not all specifically for this originally, so it's hard to be precise. Based on most of the high price items though, I'd guess the total would be somewhere around $300-$500 USD. Vacuum pump, even a really cheapo one like that, is still several hundred dollars and is the main thing driving the cost.
you have to many air leaks is the main problem you'll need a harder vacuum and voltage was to high for a fusor its around 15-35kv dc depending on distance of the anode and cathode.
I might be a little late to the party but it looks like you're sealing against the raw faces of the aluminum plates. If you take something very flat like a sheet of glass or 12"X12" floor tile and a few sheets of fine sand paper you can lap the surface of those plates to get a much better seal, the raw surface of rolled aluminum plate is not extremely flat. You might also look into changing the seal material, it might be off-gassing or not soft enough to seal against the glass. And if nothing else you can gob some JB weld all over the threaded ports to eliminate leaks at the top, just make sure to strip all the exposed Teflon off the threads
I think more people should publish information on failures. After having seen various rebuilds of the fusor design I assume we can learn more from failures than from success. Probably the vacuum isn't strong enough. Have you tried to measure the achievable vacuum by directly connecting a gauge to the pump hose? Have you tried to install a valve between your chamber and the pump so that you can cut off the vacuum hose and watch the pressure (hopefully not) rising in the chamber? Also I guess your mechanical gauge is not really suitable for measuring low vacuums. I'd try to go for a pirani on ebay. The burn marks of the transformer could maybe be avoided by storing the transformer in an oil bath which will isolate electrically and help conduct heat away from the diode. Also a kind of current limiting resistor might be an idea not to overload the diode. Best regards and keep researching and publishing.
Unfortunately, I epoxied that gauge into the fusor without testing my pump in insolation, first. Rookie mistake. I should just acquire a better gauge, like you suggest, regardless. Good idea about installing a valve in between to see how well the chamber holds vacuum with the pump off. Also good advice about the flyback transformer overheating. I use that flyback for a lot of other things (that abuse it much less), so coming back to this project later, I'll likely build/acquire a more robust, dedicated power supply for it. Thanks for the advice!
You should have used vacuum grease on your seals and chased any leaks to get it to hold vacuum as you obviously have major leak issues. also grid size is to big for the power source you were using, 25mm would be all that you would get for that flyback set up.
I totally agree about the vacuum grease and that's one of the main things I'm going to change when I try this again. Using vacuum grease for things like this is apparently a debated topic though. I received very conflicting advice and some people were adamant that you should not use vacuum grease on something like this, because the heat + high voltage would cause the grease itself to start outgassing. After having tried this though, I'm pretty sure that was bad advice and perhaps those people didn't understand that I was not trying to make a "real" fusor, just a "demo" fusor. I'm curious how you came up with 25mm for the grid size though. What's your reasoning behind that? I just want to learn and gain more knowledge about this so I can explain what's going on correctly when I revisit this in a future video.
@@CoilLabs im currently building a fussor and was getting the 25mm based on the size of your set up, the bigger the grid the more plasma that needs to be formed and this requires much more distance, voltage and insulation, and the bigger the vacuum chamber, the bigger the pump you need. the biggest issue you have though is the vacuum leaks, you need to get the chamber to the point of being able to hold the vacuum when the pump is turned off.
I have a 50kv former x ray transformer that i will be powereing mine with, and have a large 2 stage vacuum pump. will be doing a aluminium tube body and Acrylic or polycarbonate end caps. just a demo fusor like your one was meant to be. i will get more serious if i ever get a better vacuum pump.
Haha not gonna lie, I haven't seen that movie and I had to look up the reference. I'll take being compared to Keanu Reeves as a compliment any day though! 😉
You ever get this to work? I’ve made like 8 different designs and buy did I make a lot of mistakes. Lots of time later I got it! However then I decided to go for actual fusion but have had a bunch of expensive af stainless steal chamber fittings, clamps, oil diffusion pumps, deuterium, etc. laying in my shop. Now I’m going for the Tesla coil build instead🤣
@@CoilLabs budget?🤣 I’m a broke college kid. Over the period of maybe a year and a half I’ve been messaging wayyyyy to many people on eBay trying to get the materials and waiting for crazy deals in everything. Tbh I don’t plan on revisiting this project anytime soon. Not sure if there is a way to private message so my email isn’t exposed but if you’d like I’d be able to work out a deal with you on everything? I’ve got a huge assortment of flanges, seals, stainless vacuum chambers, 2 diffusion pumps, roughing pump, etc. although the roughing pump id just get at harbor freight lol. Just let me know if it interests you at all! Love to see someone complete my unfinished project!!
yeah it took me like 58 tries and three weeks to get my first Farnsworth fusor to work with the cheap material's I had at the time and a old fridge pump may it rest in peace it lasted for 1year and got me all the way to testing the vfr prototype, and engineering with theoretical work from lpp fusion in mind....not easy and i havent even got to the direct energy conversion or ion capturing to get an out put i need to rebuild my whole setup with proper parts pumps and not have it build out of scrap and i need to get used to documenting all my experiments im new to youtube
you have a leak on your system, a big one by the looks of it, try to avoid epoxy, epoxys for vacuum are really expensive so unlessyou have a specialty one it would outgas like crazy, normally high vacuum pumps are also used, like a diffusion pump or a turbomolecular one just to ensure your chamber is clean of contaminants then you feed deuterium again to the chamber, you can use a thick glass bowl as a chamber, next week i will try also to demostrate electrostatic confinement, and a simple setup
your vacuum chamber works .. you have a problem with your circuit... the two-wire must be separated enough .....your inner wire is too close to the bottom which is connected to another wire,... increase the height of the inner wire, and insulate it properly until it reaches the desire hight in vacuum chamber.....btw you need a magnetic field to make a doughnut shape plasma ball.
You need a pump rated for 0.1-0.01 mTorr. The cheap chinese ones are not capable of that. Ps, you can also use a sparkplug as a electrode so you can use a thread instead of epoxy
Thank you for this. Your honesty is extremely refreshing. First, your description of what you're building is accurate. There are so many fusor videos where someone will exclaim their demo fusor is a working fusion reactor. Second, you willingness to show your mistakes and put yourself out there earned you a subscriber today. We need more of this. I'm excited to watch your channel grow. Keep at the fusor. You WILL get there.
Thank you, I really appreciate that!
When it comes to the obvious leak in your system, i recommend a thick layer of hard, heat resistant rubber for the sealing rings. I used those for my fusor, and it took 4 days for it to leak all the pressure out. A good fusor is very dependant on a high and good vacuum.
stepping towards success opon failures ...... (how things work in real world)
Keep doing these stuff..... 👍
Great stuff! I appreciate seeing the occasional failure: we learn more from it. Glad I happened upon this.
Definitely a big leak: it should be able to hold a vacuum when the pump is turned off. Industry standard for leak-checking is a spray bottle filled with water and dish soap. For positive-pressure containers: spray it on fittings and if it bubbles, you have a leak. But this doesn't work so well with vacuum systems. Thankfully, since your chamber is glass, you can probably see bubbles from the outside (a leak will pull in the soapy water and hopefully they will make visible bubbles). I haven't actually done this with vacuums though, so it might be difficult. My biggest concern is the gasket, so check all around that and spray on both the top and bottom of the gasket. A slight imperfection or scratch in the metal surface could cause a significant leak. My second concern is the tapped hole that was overdrilled. If it turns out too bad, it might still be salvageable by using liquid pipe dope (make sure to get a kind that will actually harden) as well as the pipe tape. Although I don't know how well the liquid pipe dope works on a vacuum.
Regarding outgassing (and holding at low pressures): The pump and the tube it came with are probably fine, although if you put a valve between them and the tank, you can check by closing it before turning off the pump. Pumps can usually hold a bit of vacuum when they are turned off (even my cheap $100 one). I'm not sure what the white plastic pipe is, but if it's PVC/CPVC you'll want to replace it. PVC is terrible for vacuums. Teflon or UHMWPE or JB weld would be preferred if you need plastic. The standard JB weld is surprisingly good for vacuum systems (I've used it on 10^-7 tor systems and Thought Emporium has used it to good extent). For other materials, you can look up outgassing properties by searching "NASA Outgassing Database". As a rough rule of thumb, you want something with a TML
Lots of great info, thank you so much! I do plan to get back to this at some point. Really appreciate all the details you provided here!
Hey, nice video! (I know I'm late but) I'm planning on building the same design - the instructions say to use a 4¼ hole saw bit to cut the aluminum bar stock but yours looks bigger than that. Can you tell me what size you used? Thanks! Again, nice video!
What I did to save myself some effort was buy two of these 6 inch diameter, 1/2 inch thick aluminum disks from McMaster-Carr www.mcmaster.com/1610T56-1610T147/
In retrospect, I think the surface finish on these disks is a part of my issue holding a vacuum though. They're a pretty rough finish, so it might be advisable to find something with a smoother finish or machine them down a bit to remove all the irregularities yourself, if you have access to the tools to do so.
@@CoilLabs Thanks! 1 last thing, is McMaster-Carr reliable? I want to buy parts from them but I've never heard of them outside of this project
At least here in the United States they are THE main vendor for raw materials for one-off engineering projects. Talk to any machine shop that makes one-off stuff (i.e., not a factory that's ordering massive stock in bulk) and I'm sure they order from McMaster-Carr. They're not cheap, but they're a very serious, professional vendor. I've used them for both personal projects and work for over 10 years now.
Great vid; I love that you show failure when it happens. Others have probably mentioned this already, but epoxy can outgas a lot for a long time after it seems cured. That might be what’s killing your vacuum.
Exactly
I would watch the Video from the thought emporium. I think It would really help he also faild the first time. I hope it helps you. Nice vid 🙂
Don’t know if you’ve tried it again, but the setup looks like it should work, but I’d question your gaskets and pump. Use stiffer gaskets, with a gasket sealant, and a pump rated to get down to like 1.5 micron for good measure. Also what kind of voltage output are you getting from your hardware? 50kV to 100kV should get you a good one.
more videos like that
Hi! I am a IB student from the Netherlands. First of all I appreciate your honesty and you are totally right about how prototypes never work perfectly first try, I myself am building a Fusor for a school project and my question is if you perfected you're prototype and are willing to have a online meeting for me to interview you and possibly give me tips for my own fusor demo . I hope to hear back from you! Thank you in advance and kind regards, Jayden Beesemer IB MYP 5
Hi Jayden! I have not had a chance to revisit this project yet, so I do not have any further insight than what you see in the video, unfortunately. There are many other people who are far more knowledgeable about fusors than I am, though. I do not consider myself anywhere near an expert on this topic yet. Some people have left very good suggestions about what to improve in the comments here and there are a number of other good videos and websites with info on demo fusors. Good luck with your project!
Good work ;)
Just a few things. If you need to use epoxy just use "JB Weld" as it's trusted amongst UHV community. Test your rotary pump directly to see what vacuum it's capable of. For that size chamber you likely only need 15-30kV, the higher the voltage you will need better vacuum due to arcing within the chamber. Your tube connected to your pump is very long and could be outgassing.
when i get better and more videos i can wait to do fail comp and blooper reel there will be alot of fails
You should get pipe thread taps
What caused it to jump around on the inside? Just electricity being electricity?
I think it's the interaction of a few different things, but I'd say the main reason is convection due to heating. Plasma gets hot and rises, but because it's already plasma, it's conductive and the arc moves with it, because it's the path of least resistance.
Exact same reason a jacob's ladder moves upward
the fusor is completely fine i believe, and i think your powersupply is good as well, the vacuum pump will not cut it though,as you can see it wasn’t able to bring it down anywhere near it should for fusion to occur. also check for leaks
That pump can (according to its specs) get down to a lot lower pressure than it did. I agree, there are definitely leaks that need fixing.
@@CoilLabs the fusor looks great though, good luck!
I agree with the comment suggesting that you probably have a leak. I think you should try a couple simple things before you give up on this. First, I would put a good valve in front of the pump. Then you can close it and turn off the pump to test your vacuum. Second, I think using some kind of vacuum grease on the seal will help you. Lastly, if all you want is a 'star in a jar', maybe you should try installing a second gas feedthrough and filling the camber with an inert gas, like helium or neon in order to aim for a glow discharge.
Aaaaaaa all that stray inductance on the ZVS. Please use shorter wires between the output of the zvs and the flyback/capacitors :) (this isn’t why it didn’t work though)
The end result is pretty cool even though it doesn’t work. It has a cool spiral jacobs ladder effect!
Yeah, that ZVS driver was built a long time ago, back when I was way less knowledge and was afraid to make more permanent connections because I was worried about killing flybacks all the time. Which I did, because I didn't know what I was doing, haha. Anyway, I'm planning to build a better and also much higher power ZVS driver at some point in the near future.
@@CoilLabs Nice!
yeah I just put my ZVS (incl rectifier, smoothing, and gate supply, the only wires sticking out are the mains plug from my variac to it and the mains plug for my gate driver) neatly and compactly in to a box. Regretted it shortly after when I killed the 2 sets of IGBTs in quick succession...
@@CoilLabs look at snipex_ he is master of zvs i think he will help you . but i would build somethink like this not zvs ua-cam.com/video/3X2Rr2S34dw/v-deo.html hope it will help you
oh hello vdekje
That's cool! Yeah, I want to build something way more powerful that I can use for a lot of different projects. Hopefully make a video about that at some point, once I've designed whatever it's going to be.
It looks like that there is no vacuum grease on on the rubber rings between the glass and the aluminium plates. You need to apply a lot of high vacuum grease on both sides of the two rubber rings because the aluminium and the glass tube are not smooth. The fact that the vacuum gauge jumps so fast to zero as soon as you disable the vacuum pump clearly indicates a leak. I think that the vacuum hose and pump should be good enough in order to let the demo fusor work properly.
You're right, the surfaces of the glass and aluminum definitely aren't smooth enough and that's definitely a problem. The vacuum grease is something I've seen a lot of conflicting opinions on, for this particular application, though. I'm general, you're absolutely right, it would help it seal, but in this particular, I've seen people say it's actually detrimental, because the high heat and strong electric field can actually cause the grease to outgas significantly and just make the situation worse, so that's why I tried without it.
@@CoilLabs Avoiding vacuum grease in a real fusor is indeed necessary, but that requires quality high vacuum equipment with for example metal on metal seals. This design from Makezine just uses simple components which require the use of vacuum grease. I have also build a demo fusor from the Makezine design and it works fine with quality vacuum grease.
I made one similar to this and had similar issues.
This was an amazing video regardless of the failure. I'm interested in building the same design as you did in the video and I'm curious on the cost.
Many different parts were bought/acquired over time and not all specifically for this originally, so it's hard to be precise. Based on most of the high price items though, I'd guess the total would be somewhere around $300-$500 USD. Vacuum pump, even a really cheapo one like that, is still several hundred dollars and is the main thing driving the cost.
Know that you made a good job
you have to many air leaks is the main problem you'll need a harder vacuum and voltage was to high for a fusor its around 15-35kv dc depending on distance of the anode and cathode.
I might be a little late to the party but it looks like you're sealing against the raw faces of the aluminum plates. If you take something very flat like a sheet of glass or 12"X12" floor tile and a few sheets of fine sand paper you can lap the surface of those plates to get a much better seal, the raw surface of rolled aluminum plate is not extremely flat. You might also look into changing the seal material, it might be off-gassing or not soft enough to seal against the glass. And if nothing else you can gob some JB weld all over the threaded ports to eliminate leaks at the top, just make sure to strip all the exposed Teflon off the threads
Lots of great suggestions, thanks!
use washers under nuts to spread pressure on glass.
I think more people should publish information on failures. After having seen various rebuilds of the fusor design I assume we can learn more from failures than from success.
Probably the vacuum isn't strong enough. Have you tried to measure the achievable vacuum by directly connecting a gauge to the pump hose?
Have you tried to install a valve between your chamber and the pump so that you can cut off the vacuum hose and watch the pressure (hopefully not) rising in the chamber?
Also I guess your mechanical gauge is not really suitable for measuring low vacuums. I'd try to go for a pirani on ebay.
The burn marks of the transformer could maybe be avoided by storing the transformer in an oil bath which will isolate electrically and help conduct heat away from the diode. Also a kind of current limiting resistor might be an idea not to overload the diode.
Best regards and keep researching and publishing.
Unfortunately, I epoxied that gauge into the fusor without testing my pump in insolation, first. Rookie mistake. I should just acquire a better gauge, like you suggest, regardless. Good idea about installing a valve in between to see how well the chamber holds vacuum with the pump off. Also good advice about the flyback transformer overheating. I use that flyback for a lot of other things (that abuse it much less), so coming back to this project later, I'll likely build/acquire a more robust, dedicated power supply for it. Thanks for the advice!
You should have used vacuum grease on your seals and chased any leaks to get it to hold vacuum as you obviously have major leak issues. also grid size is to big for the power source you were using, 25mm would be all that you would get for that flyback set up.
I totally agree about the vacuum grease and that's one of the main things I'm going to change when I try this again. Using vacuum grease for things like this is apparently a debated topic though. I received very conflicting advice and some people were adamant that you should not use vacuum grease on something like this, because the heat + high voltage would cause the grease itself to start outgassing. After having tried this though, I'm pretty sure that was bad advice and perhaps those people didn't understand that I was not trying to make a "real" fusor, just a "demo" fusor.
I'm curious how you came up with 25mm for the grid size though. What's your reasoning behind that? I just want to learn and gain more knowledge about this so I can explain what's going on correctly when I revisit this in a future video.
@@CoilLabs im currently building a fussor and was getting the 25mm based on the size of your set up, the bigger the grid the more plasma that needs to be formed and this requires much more distance, voltage and insulation, and the bigger the vacuum chamber, the bigger the pump you need. the biggest issue you have though is the vacuum leaks, you need to get the chamber to the point of being able to hold the vacuum when the pump is turned off.
I have a 50kv former x ray transformer that i will be powereing mine with, and have a large 2 stage vacuum pump. will be doing a aluminium tube body and Acrylic or polycarbonate end caps. just a demo fusor like your one was meant to be. i will get more serious if i ever get a better vacuum pump.
Success born of failure is wisdom
You remind me of Eddie in the movie chain reaction. Maybe it’s a resonant thing.
Haha not gonna lie, I haven't seen that movie and I had to look up the reference. I'll take being compared to Keanu Reeves as a compliment any day though! 😉
need mpre vacuum or it less vvacuum
You ever get this to work? I’ve made like 8 different designs and buy did I make a lot of mistakes. Lots of time later I got it! However then I decided to go for actual fusion but have had a bunch of expensive af stainless steal chamber fittings, clamps, oil diffusion pumps, deuterium, etc. laying in my shop. Now I’m going for the Tesla coil build instead🤣
Haven't had time to get back to this yet, unfortunately. Cool that you already have that stuff. Way outside of my budget to acquire stuff like that.
@@CoilLabs budget?🤣 I’m a broke college kid. Over the period of maybe a year and a half I’ve been messaging wayyyyy to many people on eBay trying to get the materials and waiting for crazy deals in everything. Tbh I don’t plan on revisiting this project anytime soon. Not sure if there is a way to private message so my email isn’t exposed but if you’d like I’d be able to work out a deal with you on everything? I’ve got a huge assortment of flanges, seals, stainless vacuum chambers, 2 diffusion pumps, roughing pump, etc. although the roughing pump id just get at harbor freight lol. Just let me know if it interests you at all! Love to see someone complete my unfinished project!!
You need to talk to Lex Fridman's dad about your plasma
Get rid of the plastic hose in your build and use a turbo pump infront of your vacuum pump. :D
Need more $$$ 😉
yeah it took me like 58 tries and three weeks to get my first Farnsworth fusor to work with the cheap material's I had at the time and a old fridge pump may it rest in peace it lasted for 1year and got me all the way to testing the vfr prototype, and engineering with theoretical work from lpp fusion in mind....not easy and i havent even got to the direct energy conversion or ion capturing to get an out put i need to rebuild my whole setup with proper parts pumps and not have it build out of scrap and i need to get used to documenting all my experiments im new to youtube
you have a leak on your system, a big one by the looks of it, try to avoid epoxy, epoxys for vacuum are really expensive so unlessyou have a specialty one it would outgas like crazy, normally high vacuum pumps are also used, like a diffusion pump or a turbomolecular one just to ensure your chamber is clean of contaminants then you feed deuterium again to the chamber, you can use a thick glass bowl as a chamber, next week i will try also to demostrate electrostatic confinement, and a simple setup
your vacuum chamber works .. you have a problem with your circuit... the two-wire must be separated enough .....your inner wire is too close to the bottom which is connected to another wire,... increase the height of the inner wire, and insulate it properly until it reaches the desire hight in vacuum chamber.....btw you need a magnetic field to make a doughnut shape plasma ball.
cool project 👍 but watch out for x-rays
Bisous
You need a pump rated for 0.1-0.01 mTorr. The cheap chinese ones are not capable of that.
Ps, you can also use a sparkplug as a electrode so you can use a thread instead of epoxy
Another Ps, Original JB Weld works best for vacuum chambers instead of epoxy ;)
Stick to it.