MAYDAY

[Doug Coulter]

I like it when experiments turn out more or less as I expect - hopefully, I thought it through, and got a little improvement, or at least learned something new. People who know me know that me being at a loss for words is quite rare.

Here's the really short couple vids - holy crap, batman!
http://youtu.be/7JVfR6wZ1pU


This might be close to that. While I'm sure some of what I just saw was equipment error/artifact, some was certainly not, and it's crazy too-good-to-be-true.
I was running a new setup. I have a 4+::1 turns ratio transformer, with the high turns winding in series with our main grid, and the secondary coupled to our "ion source" grid. Since I'd earlier discovered that we have a triode here with a lot of power and voltage gain, I thought it might be elegant to see what would happen just making it oscillate on purpose rather than the usual parasitics, which we'd seen in the past with nothing at all special to help it happen (Hams will know what happens if you bias a big power tube in its active range with even untuned circuits in the grid and plate - same here). It was a wild shot. Electron transit times etc would make things oscillate way too fast - which we'd seen by accident. Ion times a little too slow, as they'd probably hit the walls and be lost, so the idea was, make this broadband transformer (it's really good from around 20khz up to around 28 mhz - anyone who knows RF knows that means I did quite a job there). No deliberate tuning, just strays.

We are feeding the main grid through a 50k ohm 225w resistor, then the transformer primary. We are feeding the second "ion source" grid through another 50k resistor, but with the transformer secondary hooked straight to the grid, and with the other side of the secondary connected through a .01uf/40kv cap to a 6.8k "arc protect" resistor on the ground side of the cap.

The results were, I think, astonishing. But there was so much "RF in the shack" that my data aq blew up - actually, the host computer for it refused to respond instantly with even just the ion grid power on, and it free-run oscillating.
What is VERY STRANGE is that all my neutron detectors were showing counts in the range for 8-9 million neuts/second off just that - 36kv or so at 12 ma (current limit of the little spellman that we use for that). If I assume square law for distance, for detectors calibrated for their distance from the main grid, but further from this one - it works out right around 4 times that! Holy cow!

Obviously I need to get to beavering away on shielding and get my normal data aq back going again. And oh yes, when just foolin around (all I could do without some decent data aq other than eyes and ears and handheld counters) with both grids turned on - it was FAR better than usual. The ear isn't a computer/counter, but it's not utterly stupid either, and we connect our detectors through a multichannel audio rig for tuning all the time as a "backup" which in this case was about all I had.


So, Pix and such. Here's one of it all going at once:

Purty by some definition - the look of success

For once it really does look like a star in a jar - not the usual recombining D spectra.

First shot with new 2nd grid wiring:

First shot with new setup. Note main power is tiny - it's barely at idle but it crashed the world anyway.

Here's another with just the 2nd grid going - you can see where I turned off its DC supply - the X rays and neutrons (from a far away detector!) go down then.

Only ran a few seconds before the crash...of the PC USB driver, not my own hardware.

Sadly, once I kicked on the main supply there was no data take-able. Even my multimeter with the HV probe on it went blink and all the digit bars on....must have been a LOT of RF. In fact, I put on the scope and picked some up from across the room. I couldn't even standard-count my silver, but next time I'll have a backup at hand...could be tomorrow. If that shows the numbers I expect, well then....this was the right trick, and did I say I haven't even hooked up a tuning cap yet? Nor tried the other polarity of the transformer (it's in the polarity now that ought to be negative feedback if not for transit times).

But the nice new scope was safely 15 feet away, and caught some of what was going on with nothing but a probe tip floating in midair a long way from the fusor.
Here's a little of what it saw.

Some scope data - at least 2 frequencies are present here. Probably relaxation or squeqqing along with the real, higher, frequency

Mostly the higher stuff on this one.

I'm combining a couple of really short movie clips on another computer and I will add them to this post so you can see/hear it in action. Either we're onto something here, or I just had every single piece of electronics in my lab tell me lies, or go dead.
Seems unlikely. It's probably not as good as it looks - that would be incredible luck, but it's certainly better than before - seems to have been a good guess on the new lashup which BTW, still has the 3/4 scale main grid in it. I don't open that door any more than I absolutely have to - it takes days to get back to really good purity in the vacuum each time.

[Jake Gray]

Are you still with us Doug?

You post this run and then silence for several weeks. I hope you didn't irradiate yourself, or at least not more than usual.

[Doug Coulter]

Yup, still here. I got swamped with a ton of new "fame" and had to deal with that - someone shared the Motherboard video on Facebook with my PHONE NUMBER. Seems people forget or worse, don't care they're in another timezone and I sleep at night when I can...

Along with that, we made another huge breakthrough based on this run, so for the next few we're adding some further shielding - I did get a dose (much) more than I like on that, while still being under the reccomendations for pro workers in the field (barely), I like to keep a margin of safety here. So, we'll be hanging up some moderator sheets, boron based neutron absorbers, and more lead while I think about how to chase down the new breakthrough. We're only a factor of 10-4 (or 10e-3 - measurements went blank with the huge output, computers crashed etc and I had to guess) from actual, practical gain here - that's one heck of a lot of radiation in a home shop even at single watt levels. Basically, it looks like we're now getting bunching along the beam, as well as focus, with a further advantage of pulsing which prevents all the spins of the D's from lining up just wrong for fusion. That was an improvement of factor of 2800 in Q all in one go. Obviously, there's little chance I hit the right parameters on everything on that first try, so there's almost certainly a lot more there with tuning.

So, while not exciting enough to post about while doing it, the next little bit I'm just going to be putting in some safety stuff. I also have some more candidates for board members I have to get around to signing up - While most requestors are obviously the equal of 13 year old boys wanting a tutor (I send them to fusor.net), some look like "the real deal" - pro scientists and engineers, and those we want here where we are writing the book, rather than tutoring newbies - yes, I know it's slightly elitist, but hey, we don't want to lose our good content in a flood of questions that are easily answered on google or wikipedia, or have our best members lose patience with it all due to that.

[Jake Gray]

Happy to offer my services.

http://ca.linkedin.com/in/jakegray

I'm a business development guy in the utility space, but if you'd like help with business plan, financial modeling, general text editing etc., I'm happy to help.

[Doug Coulter]

Thanks for the offer. Should I decide to start another biz, I'll let you know. You never know, but right now, retirement is kinda fun at least till I run low on funds.
It's as much a function of having the right talent/team as it is that other stuff...and it hasn't shown up at my door looking for work, lately. Once you have a great team, the rest is all downhill - customers flock to talent that can deliver the goods on time, in budget, at least in my experience, so far. But in this economy, not many customers are doing R&D and need a team of experts to get better time to market at high quality - my specialty, so I'm not expecting to do that again just now.

[Jake Gray]

While I'm more trouble than help with the level of technical challenges you are overcoming, if you need other help such as technical writing, filtering requests or somehow preparing data for presentation I'm happy to help.

It's a treat to read along to your puzzles, and if I had the time / budget / space I'd be trying to replicate your results.

Don't hesitate to write up the safety additions as it is all relevant to the safety of the machine and also the validity of your data aq, and it is not boring at all. Your mix of high precision detail where required and duct tape and bailing wire where adequate makes for good reading.

Cheers!

[Doug Coulter]

Oh, sure. That will get its own topic/thread. But there's a lot of difference between doing it and showing it. You don't want a movie (nor do I want to upload it) of me sitting around waiting for cerro-safe shielding metal to melt or solidify (can take hours at the low melt point and high phase-change heat) and so on - I'll make a vid of the fun parts and whatnot, and describe what I'm up to. But as usual, it takes sometimes weeks to make a few minutes worth of cool video (in between you know, having a life and such) - the rest is just prep and doing the same junk over and over till its done and no one wants to watch too much of that. Even me - I just have to do it.

30 seconds of me soldering lead sheet is enough to show how, even if I actually do it for days (and am). Ditto our recent tests of borax dissolved in ethylene glycol, which took almost two days to get done (and put into a hollow glass block to mount over the viewport and eat neutrons). And another 10 min to do the test. You only need about 2 minutes of vid to show that, though.

It is now, and will be for awhile, a work in progress.

Edit - here, BTW, is the reason for the pause. We're regularly up to nearly 10 million neutrons (twice that fusions) / second with only a couple hundred watts input, and over 10 if I crank it up - and that's without the "special sauce" pulsing mode - just a better grid....the "special sauce" adds another 1k or so factor...so...I need this improved shielding!

Over 10 m n/s cranked, but near ten even at idle, and without the mathieu sync pulsing....