October 2002 Archives

Well, I got two quotes on the custom chamber last week.  One was about where I projected the cost to be, the other was about half again as much as the first quote.  Obviously, there's quite a range in the market place.

After an exhausting week at work, I managed to get a few hours in on this weekend into the fusion project.  I've been squirreling out some few hours between builds and short regressions, as well as reading up on various things that I need to learn about.

I got another two bars milled out for the edges of the cage today.  That makes six total.  The new clamping is working like a champ and it goes much faster.  I spent some time transferring the design of the ion gun from the patent to Inventor.  Will still need some tweaking and it's not complete.  But it looks like it might work.

God, I simply love patents.  Kudos to the theory that we can grant short term monopolies for publishing of the information.

I posted the CAD repository, as it stands.  Certainly need some more work, so be kind in your criticism.

Spent some time milling some of the quarter inch bar I'm using for the chamber steel cage.  To build the cage, the pieces need to have half of the dihedral angle of the cuboctahedron (125 degrees, 14 minutes).  Getting a 28 degree angle was, shall we say, interesting.  The required angle such that two fit together correctly, is 27 degrees 46 minutes.  I have this interesting 2 axis rotating vice which worked fine to get the angle, but how on earth do I clamp it?  I ended up cutting a piece of an aluminum tube at the correct height, and then using standard clamping at the end.  I was worried that it wouldn't be secure, but turned out fine.  Of course, the quarter inch bars are a bit bent - it was cut from 12 foot lengths into 2 foot lengths.  As the guy from Allen Steel was carrying them around to cut, they were naturally oscillating and bending.  <sigh>  Kinda makes it a pain in the ass.

The picture to the left is what the cage will look like assembled.  The edge length of the cuboctahedron is 4.5" - to accommodate the magnets.

Won't have time tomorrow to do anything as I'm helping a friend with her garage sale.  Hopefully I'll have enough time next week to get all 48 edges cut out (2x per cuboctahedron edge) and ready to be welded.

Well I got the D-16B upgrade on the pump back home today.   Yee gods, what a beast.  But it sucks like a...  well, let's not be graphically lewd.  Got the BFABJ swapped out for a 12" x 12" glass bell jar and cage.  Much smaller volume and a lot less surface area.  The base of the TOPS is a about 8 inches or so deep, so the total clearance is 12" x 20".  More than enough room to to silly things.

So here are some current calculations I'm using for the chamber.  The radius of the confinement chamber is roughly the size of the gyro radius of the deuterium ion with 10 kilo electron volts in a 3800 gauss field.  The system is operating below the 10 cm radius limit given by Bussard, but it will at least give me some room to maneuver inside the vacuum.  I won't be starting anywhere near 20 KeV, but that is the upper limit of the design.

Had a lot of work to do today and got home late, so not much more fun... :(