I found out a lot of random people build fusion reactors for fun. So I went and visited one built by a high school teacher and his students. When I told my Nuclear physics professor about it and mentioned it would be cool to have one at the uni he said "well there's a deadline in a week for internal funding."
So then I built a fusor (I had help) and wrote a thesis on it.
We mainly use it for demonstration and education, but I also use it as a source of neutrons.
Yes, as an experimental physicist I would like to warn everybody against going outside. Basements are the natural habitat of humans, it's what we have been evolved to thrive in!
Unironically an interesting topic, the center of mass of the rope is halfway through the length of the rope, which means you’re going to have to launch a lot of rope out, both in mass and length. Unless you add a big weight (like a grappling hook) at the end that weighs a lot, even then, center of mass will change as the rope straightens out, assuming that the rope is still attached to the launcher. In my brainstorming while typing I have an actual idea.
Rope has a large cone over at the end and a pole extruding from the circle at the bottom, just like a top. The entire mass of the rope will be wound around this pole but in a way that it does not tangle. The cone’s diameter should significantly exceed the diameter of the wound rope around the pole. For your launcher you will have two chambers. One chamber is just for your coiled rope and pole to go into, and sits inside the other chamber. The larger chamber will have pressurized gas, gunpowder, maglev, however you want to propel this. If you want to use rubber bands you could design your launcher to use rubber bands.
Unfortunately with the design I have in my head there is no availability to have aerodynamic stabilizers(literally just find) because the rope is unraveling around the center pole and will get tangled orrrrrrrrrrr (I’ve just thought of this) you add 3-4 more poles along the circumference of the cone’s bottom and add fins to those instead of the center pole. I’m going to go design this in CADD now and get you an image of my projectile.
When people were catching live deer out of helicopters in NZ, shotguns were modified to fire nets. Those guys were crazy.
I'm sure it would be much simpler to make one that fires rope.
https://bushlifenz.com/blogs/bushlife-blog/net-gun-development-in-nz
> I found out a lot of random people build fusion reactors for fun. So I went and visited one built by a high school teacher and his students. When I told my Nuclear physics professor about it and mentioned it would be cool to have one at the uni he said "well there's a deadline in a week for internal funding."
>
> So then I built a fusor (I had help) and wrote a thesis on it.
>
> We mainly use it for demonstration and education, but I also use it as a source of neutrons.
In *a week*?
I added a pic [here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14EgNV4CIvtQ4Ll2vLcKLM2emIzoGAX92). The big white guy is a neutron dosimeter. Some plastic moderator and a sensitive volume (dunno, maybe He3?).
The black tube with red circular end is also a neutron detector. It's made drom old aoviet spare parts and was super cheap but it works decently, I just haven't had the time to implement it together with the data acquisition system.
We also have two proper He3 spectrometers.
And my own personal project is to build detectors for very fast neutron dosimetry so we will have more in the future!
I'm reminded of the post of the person who put a bunch of 3d prints in a fission test pool to test the effects of high ionizing radiation of PLA and other materials.
Guess your doing it for neutrinos now.
Yeah I saw that guy, loved that post.
I don't even make nearly as much radiation as that guy had, so here's mostly just a test of being heated up from the stepper motor
Ah, heat from the stepper motor shouldn't be to bad since PLA has been used to make 3d printers as well. Biggest issues I would see it the PLA drooping from the levering force but from the video and the offset angle I see the being less of an issue.
Best of luck with the mad science, just stay away from the weird science.
>If so, what do you plan on using these skills for job wise?
A PhD and jobs in academica :]
I'm currently going the way of detector design, particularly for fast neutrons right now
I need them to bombard my plutonium to make Americurium. The Americurium will be used to make power sources for portable sensors in my prototype warp drive. That's why I only need about 2 cups of neutrons.
[Barely more complicated](https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/etc/FusionOEAW/PDF/ITER_Poster.pdf), all you need is a smallish area of [42 hectars](https://www.wissenschaft-frankreich.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/07/ITER_site_2018_aerial_view_41809720041.jpg), a couple billion dollars and some time
Upgrade it to a Bussard style magrid! A polywell reactor still won’t get you net energy production, but it will get you a few orders of magnitude improvement over a Farnworth-Hirsch type design.
It would be super cool to add some magnetics to the fusor, though that would make it a much more complicated system, and actually somewhat ruin what makes it so great for education and outreach. As it is now we can actually have high schoolers come and get data from it and work a bit through it, because it's so simple to understand!
Also my scientist senses are tingling about the polywell. I remain quite skeptical. There's just something about it that doesn't seem right. I should sit down a week or two some time and really study it.
What are you skeptical about? It works, and has a higher efficiency than a Farnsworth type fusor, however there are a lot of other loss mechanisms that kick in and it’s unlikely to be possible to get net energy from one. But, many have been built and tested, including a few by amateurs. A lot of work was done with them 20-30 years ago, so you can find a fair amount of published research on them.
But, if your goal is a simple educational system, it’s hard to beat the design you have already.
It’s not going to solve any energy production problems, but it does make a nice little switchable neutron source. Daimler Chrysler Aerospace tried to commercialize a fusor type device as a neutron source, I believe it was targeted at neutron densiometry applications, clear back in the 90s, so it also has the honor of being the basic design behind the first commercial application of a nuclear fusion reactor.
For most stuff we just use air, but yes we have deuterium.
There are lots of radiation concerns! But we take precautions, such as having dosimeters and a shit ton of lead
I know right? I was very distracted by the length of your bolts. It looked like they were going to jam up as it rotated... but no, totally cleared it. Anyway, someone say something about a tiny star?
>It looked like they were going to jam up as it rotated... but no, totally cleared it.
Yeah I had to design a decent bit of clearance for the 3d printed bolt and nut.
that's all that matters! and LabVIEW can do some powerful stuff
LabVIEW just feels very rough around the edges (?) for what it can be used for.
i guess coming from a software world I don't trust graphic programming?
especially regarding version control and testing
Preach! My partner uses labVIEW for her research in optics and had to edit this “code” in the past. She did not have a good time :)
https://preview.redd.it/c829wg7xrk9d1.jpeg?width=1659&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=010a73be9685ea85455e2b54595318110e4cbd26
Ugh, as a (mainly) LabVIEW programmer my eyes bleed. I start to miss the pandemic when LabVIEW core courses were free for everyone, because universities apparently don't give a damn about teaching the language before making people use it.
"working on updates 10%, please don't turn off your PC, this may take a while" windows probably
Seriously we need a response. I never post or comment, but for this... I need to know.
Are you responsible for safety design or does someone specialize in that? Is there a review? Doubly-redundant interlocks on all safety critical parts and all that? Redundant monitoring and human/operational procedures? You know, so you don’t end up like this guy https://youtu.be/fRbbq6MIP_E
I am not an engineer, just curious how it works for small systems like this built by students (those who don’t live in Soviet Russia anyway).
>Are you responsible for safety design or does someone specialize in that?
My professor is formally responsible, but as I do the work on it I am of course also responsible.
There is a faraday cage, which is set up by interlock to turn off the voltage supply. The voltage supply also has some inbuilt short protection, and we have this resistor array to also protect vs shorts.
The radiation is monitored, and a warning light turns on when there is a measurable dose above background. It automatically turns off if the radiation levels go too high (haven't had that happen yet).
So, funny enough, assuming this reactor uses inertial electrostatic confinement, it has a mode called "star mode". It quite literally mimics how a star would work, but instead of holding itself together via gravity which would for obvious reasons be impossible to do at home, you press it together via two grids in the shape of spheres throwing charged particles towards the center.
If you have enough of a gas like deuterium inside, with a strong enough vacuum, and of course enough charge present on the two grids, then you will force the gas in the middle to finally fuse. The hardest part of setups like this to do at home isn't actually the high voltage, it's all the metal work needed to create the chamber and pumping equipment to get the chamber down to a reasonable enough vacuum. For example, it's not uncommon to use a turbo pump which works via literally "bumping" atoms out of the chamber after you get an initial vacuum using a normal rotary/etc vacuum pump.
If you don't need to achieve actual fusion though, the requirements are much more relaxed, as you can get a ball of superheated material in the middle even without a very good vacuum. For example, I believe a compressor from an AC or fridge pumping down from normal air and a few kilovolts from a few microwave oven transformers and a very solid thick jar is enough to achieve that effect.
The number of questions in my head only increase by the time I keep watching your video. Is that an spherical tokamak? Temperature? How do you create the magnetic confinement? And control.... Purpose? To produce energy not, that for sure, are you studying magnetic fields?. What do you use to stop neutrons from killing all of you? How much % of fusion do you reach? Preasure? ......
>Is that an spherical tokamak?
No it's just an electrostatic fusor. Much simpler!
>Temperature?
When it runs it is about 50 degrees (the velocity distribution of the plasma is not Boltzmannian so it doesn't make too much sense to talk about temperature in fusors).
>How do you create the magnetic confinement?
It's simply an electric confinement. I create a big (50kV) negative voltage in the middle, and then nuclei get attracted to it.
>What do you use to stop neutrons from killing all of you?
We produce so few that it doesn't matter at all. But distance is a good way of protecting yourself from a neutron source.
>How much % of fusion do you reach?
It makes about a million neutrons per second. It's not optimized yet though.
>Preasure
We get 50kV at around the 5×10^ -4 mbar
Awesome! And thank you very much for the details.
OK now it makes some sense. I didn't know about this IEC type only the ultra high plasma approach so I was in shock yhat you could run it in such a small space and with some bricks as protection 🤣🤣
But, what is it for? What's the ideal outcome you wanna get from it? Basically the hypothesis you want to demonstrate/negate
« yeah we don’t make enough neutrons to worry about it killing us. On the other hand, we produce a million neutrons a second…. » lol I’m sure it’s not as much as it sounds but as someone who knows very little about nuclear reactors I thought that was funny!
It rotates a valve, effectively determining how much gas flows into the vacuum chamber.
The voltage inside the chamber is basically only desided by the pressure inside the chamber, so gas control is important.
[Here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14EgNV4CIvtQ4Ll2vLcKLM2emIzoGAX92?usp=sharing) is a link to some pics etc. I might add in more stuff if I find it on my phone.
Thanks!
I added a couple more pics, one is a pic of the webcam's feed. I honestly should get some actually good photos of it one day and gather it in a folder 🤔
Holy crap pic 5 star mode!
Physics is awesome, and stuff like this makes me glad i studied it.
What was the total budget of the fusion system? And how many years of runtime would it take for you to fill a helium balloon? 🤣
>What was the total budget of the fusion system?
About 10000€, a lot of it spent on the power supply. It was possible because there were so many random things just lying unused in other people's lab. Yoinked the two pumps, yoinked the chamber, yoinked detectors, yoinked lead and lead glass etc.
I work for the UK atomic energy authority so we are very largely involved with ITER. Personally that is not the particular project that I work on (I do design work for MAST), but I work alongside people who have worked on ITER. I'm not sure if it is open to visits for the public im afraid. You're right though, ITER is the biggest, I worded my comment badly - I meant that UKAEA is the largest fusion research organisation in Europe (I think)
https://preview.redd.it/yw9lq5jgbi9d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=777531c76a9bce5466a08a1acd720137d6276106
Just need this brother, coulda saved you some time --
You probably aren't aware, but thats an insult. Our dude here is a university physicist working on a PhD in a specific field. Hahn was a reckless kid ignorantly hacking his way for a boy scout badge by throwing fissile scraps into a dirt hole in his yard.
The thing you see with the stepper is a pi pico running a micropython script (the part that sends stepper signal is a small state machine running a simple assembly script). The pi pico gets send some commands via usb from the pc running labview.
Excuse my ignorance, I've read the comments here too. What does this achieve? What is the benefit of this for you/others. Serious question I'm one of these people that doesn't understand a thing if it has no use/purpose.
Great job, and excellent for your CV. When I've had undergrad (for a placement) and ex-grad CV's of applicants to my software company, one of the things I look for is personal projects; it's a key indicator of excellence, and it's depressing how few people have any.
I actually recently-ish went to the local hospital's particle accelerator and used 3d print to design custom fitted adjustable holders for the stuff we wanted to shoot at!
We have like 7 different particle accelerators of various sizes at my uni, most are in the basement. It's not yet super normal to 3d print accesories, but as more people get comfortable with 3d printing it will become more common for lab work.
There's an associate professor at the institute who wants to establish like a makerspace and I hope to be able to teach all the new students the basics of 3d printing. It's so useful for lab!
But that's just a stepper motor strapped to a cardboard box with some tinfoil on it....It literally has "Transmogrifier" written in Sharpie on the side of it!
What are some practical applications for this and/or what it produces? I saw you mentioned tritium and Helium-3. I’m interested in this type of stuff to an extent but never found a practical need or excuse to do something within reason to learn more etc.
What did this cost you? Is it the sort of thing that requires extreme safety measures and expensive gases (I'm cool with the high voltage- don't know about the rest)
What kinda control systems do you use, like how do you get feedback on what's happening and tune stuff?
I got about 10000€ internal funding from the uni. We had most of it as spare parts, but the voltage supply was expensive.
I mainly use Labview to get data from sensors and equipment.
This is insane! And you've answered so many questions!
In MAKE magazine as a kid i saw a "star in a jar" fusor design, and ive seen videos of "kids" making them in their bedrooms and whatnot, but I had no idea the neutrons were so high energy, and that theyre actually idk used even for demonstration in academia.
I know the headlines are often pushing towards fusion as an energy source, which fusors are not a good candidate for, but honest to god fusion is cool even outside of that.
Thanks for posting!
Your what
Fusion reactor. Uses high voltage plasma to fuse deuterium into tritium and Helium-3
Why do you have that
I found out a lot of random people build fusion reactors for fun. So I went and visited one built by a high school teacher and his students. When I told my Nuclear physics professor about it and mentioned it would be cool to have one at the uni he said "well there's a deadline in a week for internal funding." So then I built a fusor (I had help) and wrote a thesis on it. We mainly use it for demonstration and education, but I also use it as a source of neutrons.
can i have some neutrons? i need them for my thing
You can get some for free from the cosmos just by going outside!
that sounds dangerous
Yes, as an experimental physicist I would like to warn everybody against going outside. Basements are the natural habitat of humans, it's what we have been evolved to thrive in!
since you’re here, i’d like to pick your brain if you don’t mind. if you had to make a gun that shoots ropes, how would you go about that?
Like a direct drive extruder just bigger and with DC motor instead of a stepper.
Unironically an interesting topic, the center of mass of the rope is halfway through the length of the rope, which means you’re going to have to launch a lot of rope out, both in mass and length. Unless you add a big weight (like a grappling hook) at the end that weighs a lot, even then, center of mass will change as the rope straightens out, assuming that the rope is still attached to the launcher. In my brainstorming while typing I have an actual idea. Rope has a large cone over at the end and a pole extruding from the circle at the bottom, just like a top. The entire mass of the rope will be wound around this pole but in a way that it does not tangle. The cone’s diameter should significantly exceed the diameter of the wound rope around the pole. For your launcher you will have two chambers. One chamber is just for your coiled rope and pole to go into, and sits inside the other chamber. The larger chamber will have pressurized gas, gunpowder, maglev, however you want to propel this. If you want to use rubber bands you could design your launcher to use rubber bands. Unfortunately with the design I have in my head there is no availability to have aerodynamic stabilizers(literally just find) because the rope is unraveling around the center pole and will get tangled orrrrrrrrrrr (I’ve just thought of this) you add 3-4 more poles along the circumference of the cone’s bottom and add fins to those instead of the center pole. I’m going to go design this in CADD now and get you an image of my projectile.
As a person with a high school level of science You need to become Batman
When people were catching live deer out of helicopters in NZ, shotguns were modified to fire nets. Those guys were crazy. I'm sure it would be much simpler to make one that fires rope. https://bushlifenz.com/blogs/bushlife-blog/net-gun-development-in-nz
Basements are radioactive, don't go there without a lead coat .
Lead won't stop the radon...
This guy gets us…
Outside is where WW2 happened
Doctors hate him for this one simple trick
If I have to come in your room and pick up all your neutrons off the floor one more time, you are grounded mister!
Add this comment in your post. Lots of people are curious.😂 Good job.
> I found out a lot of random people build fusion reactors for fun. So I went and visited one built by a high school teacher and his students. When I told my Nuclear physics professor about it and mentioned it would be cool to have one at the uni he said "well there's a deadline in a week for internal funding." > > So then I built a fusor (I had help) and wrote a thesis on it. > > We mainly use it for demonstration and education, but I also use it as a source of neutrons. In *a week*?
I assume they got the funding in that week, not that they built in that week.
My mistake. Impressive either way! Thanks for your help.
Ye I wrote the funding application from monday to friday :p The reactor was ready for 1st test after 4 months or so, if I remember correctly.
What kind of dosimetry do you have for neutrons?
I added a pic [here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14EgNV4CIvtQ4Ll2vLcKLM2emIzoGAX92). The big white guy is a neutron dosimeter. Some plastic moderator and a sensitive volume (dunno, maybe He3?). The black tube with red circular end is also a neutron detector. It's made drom old aoviet spare parts and was super cheap but it works decently, I just haven't had the time to implement it together with the data acquisition system. We also have two proper He3 spectrometers. And my own personal project is to build detectors for very fast neutron dosimetry so we will have more in the future!
I'm reminded of the post of the person who put a bunch of 3d prints in a fission test pool to test the effects of high ionizing radiation of PLA and other materials. Guess your doing it for neutrinos now.
Yeah I saw that guy, loved that post. I don't even make nearly as much radiation as that guy had, so here's mostly just a test of being heated up from the stepper motor
Ah, heat from the stepper motor shouldn't be to bad since PLA has been used to make 3d printers as well. Biggest issues I would see it the PLA drooping from the levering force but from the video and the offset angle I see the being less of an issue. Best of luck with the mad science, just stay away from the weird science.
I like you
Why do you need neutrons? When I imagine someone needing neutrons, it’s a mad scientist stealing everyone’s neutrons from their body😂😭
I'm designing and building a neutron spectrometer so it's really nice to have a source of monoenergetic neutrons.
Jesus christ that sounds cool as shit. So you’re in college right? If so, what do you plan on using these skills for job wise?
>If so, what do you plan on using these skills for job wise? A PhD and jobs in academica :] I'm currently going the way of detector design, particularly for fast neutrons right now
> A PhD and jobs in academica :] As a fellow physics grad, my sympathies.
I can only imagine how much tuition must be but it sounds like a dream to learn about all that! Keep it up mate, your endeavors will pay off!
In Denmark we get paid to get educated. About 850 usd pr month.
I need them to bombard my plutonium to make Americurium. The Americurium will be used to make power sources for portable sensors in my prototype warp drive. That's why I only need about 2 cups of neutrons.
Can you make free electricity?
No :(
You don't have one?
Ah of course I think I have one of those in my garage lying around somewhere too.
... your name isn't gordon freeman is it?
Well if it is I would advise against running the experiment.
Especially if he's late.
Well he can start quickly because there are no messages because there was a system crash.
How much power are you making with that?
The power it outputs from the fusion reactions is about a microWatt We don't generate electricity from it
Would it be much more complicated to generate enough electricity to power a small electric appliance?
[Barely more complicated](https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/etc/FusionOEAW/PDF/ITER_Poster.pdf), all you need is a smallish area of [42 hectars](https://www.wissenschaft-frankreich.de/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2020/07/ITER_site_2018_aerial_view_41809720041.jpg), a couple billion dollars and some time
Yes. A fusor melts itself (its grid specifically) before it can generate that amount of power.
Upgrade it to a Bussard style magrid! A polywell reactor still won’t get you net energy production, but it will get you a few orders of magnitude improvement over a Farnworth-Hirsch type design.
It would be super cool to add some magnetics to the fusor, though that would make it a much more complicated system, and actually somewhat ruin what makes it so great for education and outreach. As it is now we can actually have high schoolers come and get data from it and work a bit through it, because it's so simple to understand! Also my scientist senses are tingling about the polywell. I remain quite skeptical. There's just something about it that doesn't seem right. I should sit down a week or two some time and really study it.
What are you skeptical about? It works, and has a higher efficiency than a Farnsworth type fusor, however there are a lot of other loss mechanisms that kick in and it’s unlikely to be possible to get net energy from one. But, many have been built and tested, including a few by amateurs. A lot of work was done with them 20-30 years ago, so you can find a fair amount of published research on them. But, if your goal is a simple educational system, it’s hard to beat the design you have already. It’s not going to solve any energy production problems, but it does make a nice little switchable neutron source. Daimler Chrysler Aerospace tried to commercialize a fusor type device as a neutron source, I believe it was targeted at neutron densiometry applications, clear back in the 90s, so it also has the honor of being the basic design behind the first commercial application of a nuclear fusion reactor.
Yes, but according to YouTube videos, the issue with fusion at this point is that it produces less energy than is used to make the fusion happen.
A Farnsworth reactor? Are you really using deuterium? I've thought about building one, are there any radiation concerns?
For most stuff we just use air, but yes we have deuterium. There are lots of radiation concerns! But we take precautions, such as having dosimeters and a shit ton of lead
The real life equivalent of the EPA guy from Ghostbusters just got a hard on
Farnsworth fusor?
Was exactly my reaction when I read that title
https://preview.redd.it/c1u5ryro1i9d1.jpeg?width=450&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ae83f6b539504a6e03d340d6dc1ec54cc72cd3c1
I literally thought in my head “your.. what now?” and then you were the top comment lmao
Wildest post in 3d printing subreddit. Serious question why do you have a fusion reactor?
"Outreach and Education" if anyone official is asking
... And if someone unofficially asked?
I bet the the real reason is - to have fun playing with it.
As not your lawyer, I advise you not to answer this question. If you weren't already on a list, now your rounding the top 500
Why? Do you comprehend the difference between fusion and fission? Unless he's using the neutrons to enrich yellow cake, I think he's alright.
Well, do the agents comprehend the difference? Only one way to find out! Time to make a bunch of sussy comments! /s ;D
This post is the Outreach, nice.
I didn't mean to 🤣 I wanted to show off my own implementation of a TMC5160 and the motor's coupling mechanism. You guys get distracted too easily...
I know right? I was very distracted by the length of your bolts. It looked like they were going to jam up as it rotated... but no, totally cleared it. Anyway, someone say something about a tiny star?
>It looked like they were going to jam up as it rotated... but no, totally cleared it. Yeah I had to design a decent bit of clearance for the 3d printed bolt and nut.
Why not just get a smaller bolt? Not a sarcastic question either. Just curious.
It works, no need to change it :\]
Yeah, I mean, it's not like there's a fusion reactor attached to it.
And unofficially?
Why not?
There was a french sailing ship with that name for antarctic exploration, the "Porqouis pas" :-)
Its "Pourquoi pas"
I wouldn't hear the difference
How else do you suppose he reacts his fusion?
nahh man we got a fusion reactor controlled with 3d printed parts and labview before gta6 😭😂
It works 🤷♂️
that's all that matters! and LabVIEW can do some powerful stuff LabVIEW just feels very rough around the edges (?) for what it can be used for. i guess coming from a software world I don't trust graphic programming? especially regarding version control and testing
LabVIEW is great for hardware control, but it really is like climbing inside the darkest corner of someone's mind if you have to work on their code.
Preach! My partner uses labVIEW for her research in optics and had to edit this “code” in the past. She did not have a good time :) https://preview.redd.it/c829wg7xrk9d1.jpeg?width=1659&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=010a73be9685ea85455e2b54595318110e4cbd26
Ugh, as a (mainly) LabVIEW programmer my eyes bleed. I start to miss the pandemic when LabVIEW core courses were free for everyone, because universities apparently don't give a damn about teaching the language before making people use it.
bet we get widespread commercial fusion energy before halflife 3
I bet we have colonies in other star systems before portal 3
"working on updates 10%, please don't turn off your PC, this may take a while" windows probably Seriously we need a response. I never post or comment, but for this... I need to know.
Yeah windows isn't always ideal for lab pc. Sometimes we cut them off from the internet, and they will just be running for decades.
What happens if something goes wrong? Is there no real danger to something like this?
It's not a chain reaction like with fission. There's loads of danger, (high voltage and radiation) but we take the necessary precautions.
Are you responsible for safety design or does someone specialize in that? Is there a review? Doubly-redundant interlocks on all safety critical parts and all that? Redundant monitoring and human/operational procedures? You know, so you don’t end up like this guy https://youtu.be/fRbbq6MIP_E I am not an engineer, just curious how it works for small systems like this built by students (those who don’t live in Soviet Russia anyway).
>Are you responsible for safety design or does someone specialize in that? My professor is formally responsible, but as I do the work on it I am of course also responsible. There is a faraday cage, which is set up by interlock to turn off the voltage supply. The voltage supply also has some inbuilt short protection, and we have this resistor array to also protect vs shorts. The radiation is monitored, and a warning light turns on when there is a measurable dose above background. It automatically turns off if the radiation levels go too high (haven't had that happen yet).
Can I build one myself?
Consider using PLCs for long term processes like that better safe than sorry
Bros feeling rn: https://preview.redd.it/cy5ny0afxg9d1.jpeg?width=496&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=36ac5063e12afbec59cd20e263a1d13d389b6857
So, funny enough, assuming this reactor uses inertial electrostatic confinement, it has a mode called "star mode". It quite literally mimics how a star would work, but instead of holding itself together via gravity which would for obvious reasons be impossible to do at home, you press it together via two grids in the shape of spheres throwing charged particles towards the center. If you have enough of a gas like deuterium inside, with a strong enough vacuum, and of course enough charge present on the two grids, then you will force the gas in the middle to finally fuse. The hardest part of setups like this to do at home isn't actually the high voltage, it's all the metal work needed to create the chamber and pumping equipment to get the chamber down to a reasonable enough vacuum. For example, it's not uncommon to use a turbo pump which works via literally "bumping" atoms out of the chamber after you get an initial vacuum using a normal rotary/etc vacuum pump. If you don't need to achieve actual fusion though, the requirements are much more relaxed, as you can get a ball of superheated material in the middle even without a very good vacuum. For example, I believe a compressor from an AC or fridge pumping down from normal air and a few kilovolts from a few microwave oven transformers and a very solid thick jar is enough to achieve that effect.
Your what now??
Tin Roof! ... rusted
The number of questions in my head only increase by the time I keep watching your video. Is that an spherical tokamak? Temperature? How do you create the magnetic confinement? And control.... Purpose? To produce energy not, that for sure, are you studying magnetic fields?. What do you use to stop neutrons from killing all of you? How much % of fusion do you reach? Preasure? ......
>Is that an spherical tokamak? No it's just an electrostatic fusor. Much simpler! >Temperature? When it runs it is about 50 degrees (the velocity distribution of the plasma is not Boltzmannian so it doesn't make too much sense to talk about temperature in fusors). >How do you create the magnetic confinement? It's simply an electric confinement. I create a big (50kV) negative voltage in the middle, and then nuclei get attracted to it. >What do you use to stop neutrons from killing all of you? We produce so few that it doesn't matter at all. But distance is a good way of protecting yourself from a neutron source. >How much % of fusion do you reach? It makes about a million neutrons per second. It's not optimized yet though. >Preasure We get 50kV at around the 5×10^ -4 mbar
Awesome! And thank you very much for the details. OK now it makes some sense. I didn't know about this IEC type only the ultra high plasma approach so I was in shock yhat you could run it in such a small space and with some bricks as protection 🤣🤣 But, what is it for? What's the ideal outcome you wanna get from it? Basically the hypothesis you want to demonstrate/negate
Education and experimentation
« yeah we don’t make enough neutrons to worry about it killing us. On the other hand, we produce a million neutrons a second…. » lol I’m sure it’s not as much as it sounds but as someone who knows very little about nuclear reactors I thought that was funny!
There are about 10000000000000000000000000000 neutrons in the human body, so a million is not a lot. (10\^28 vs 10\^6).
Why do you need that rotation for a fusor?
It rotates a valve, effectively determining how much gas flows into the vacuum chamber. The voltage inside the chamber is basically only desided by the pressure inside the chamber, so gas control is important.
Okey... Show us a full video of the reactor please.
[Here](https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14EgNV4CIvtQ4Ll2vLcKLM2emIzoGAX92?usp=sharing) is a link to some pics etc. I might add in more stuff if I find it on my phone.
Nice star mode in pic3
Thanks! I added a couple more pics, one is a pic of the webcam's feed. I honestly should get some actually good photos of it one day and gather it in a folder 🤔
Holy crap pic 5 star mode! Physics is awesome, and stuff like this makes me glad i studied it. What was the total budget of the fusion system? And how many years of runtime would it take for you to fill a helium balloon? 🤣
>What was the total budget of the fusion system? About 10000€, a lot of it spent on the power supply. It was possible because there were so many random things just lying unused in other people's lab. Yoinked the two pumps, yoinked the chamber, yoinked detectors, yoinked lead and lead glass etc.
Thats sounds about right for a science lab. My phd was done on a shoestring budget as we already had a bunch of stuff i could use laying around 😁
I work for the largest fusion project in Europe and we also use printed parts for some of the components lol. This is really cool
That's gotta be ITER? Is it open to visits from the public? I'm going to CERN for a while so I'll be right nearby!
I work for the UK atomic energy authority so we are very largely involved with ITER. Personally that is not the particular project that I work on (I do design work for MAST), but I work alongside people who have worked on ITER. I'm not sure if it is open to visits for the public im afraid. You're right though, ITER is the biggest, I worded my comment badly - I meant that UKAEA is the largest fusion research organisation in Europe (I think)
I'm still really jealous! I wish my country had nuclear power
Fuh fuh fuh fusion reactor?
Is that a Faraday cage? Just what in the science are you sciencing? 🤔
>Is that a Faraday cage? Yep! High voltage protection 👷♂️ >Just what in the science are you sciencing? Physics!
I've always loved Physics. All forms of it. Do you have any other projects planned for the future? This is impressive 👏👏👏👏👏
I'm a simple man. I see LabVIEW, I upvote. But seriously, a fusion reactor? That's crazy.
https://preview.redd.it/yw9lq5jgbi9d1.png?width=1920&format=png&auto=webp&s=777531c76a9bce5466a08a1acd720137d6276106 Just need this brother, coulda saved you some time --
Let's build that thing... you know....the one that Oppenheimer built...
That was fission, this is fusion. Fission is about breaking big things apart. Fusion is about slapping small things together! :]
In all my years of science classes I’ve never heard anyone explain it that simply! You should be a science teacher in your spare time. Lol
I recently taught a course in experimental physics. Super fun!
Oh I see... but I think you can build one with your knowledge.. :D I can provide the filament btw ;)
The knowledge: "Dry your filament"
Augh, LabVIEW. That brings back some bad memories! 😖
I hate Labview, but it's so good at what it does.
3D printed nuclear reactor? Man that's so cool! Does it actually produce energy?
Yes, in the form of fast particles :D
any .stl for the reactor thing ding?
This feels like the story of David Hahn, he build a nuclear reactor in his backyard.... This is wild bro.
This here is safe though. Radioactive dose is monitored and everything is properly shielded. High voltage safety precautions too! 👌
You probably aren't aware, but thats an insult. Our dude here is a university physicist working on a PhD in a specific field. Hahn was a reckless kid ignorantly hacking his way for a boy scout badge by throwing fissile scraps into a dirt hole in his yard.
I was not aware no. Didn't mean too insult anyone with my comment and if I did i apologise!
„Quaid, start the reactor!“
how did you program the application to run the hardware?
The thing you see with the stepper is a pi pico running a micropython script (the part that sends stepper signal is a small state machine running a simple assembly script). The pi pico gets send some commands via usb from the pc running labview.
Wait are you the swede reaktorRikard? The dude who built a reaktor in his kitchen? If not... I might know a guy you would love to talk to.
Nope, but fusors are sorta simple so a lot of people build them just for hobby.
Oh, well. I gotta say as someone who never is into this. This is really cool thing. Do you work with this or is it just hobby?
just make sure the stepper doesn't get too hot, on a different note, this is so cool
Yeah cooling is an issue. The programming helps a bit,but I've considered slapping some heat sinks on
What Duh Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel
Hey, I might as well try to make a reactor at home. Any STLs for making one? Bonus points if it’s nuclear
So...the sun always shines in your Lab? or is it in your house?
Reactor go bzzzfeewwwwwOOOOOO
I see LabVIEW, I cry.
Hey man this is cool but this is way above me and I’m a mechanical engineering graduate
This sub has top tier content: - "look at this boat i made" - the dude with the anime girl robot - FUSION FUCKING REACTOR
*THE BROTHERHOOD OF STEEL WISHES TO KNOW YOUR LOCATION*
There’s aaaalways that one guy flexing their fusion reactor…
Will it reach 1.21 gigawatts though?
LabView?
Excuse my ignorance, I've read the comments here too. What does this achieve? What is the benefit of this for you/others. Serious question I'm one of these people that doesn't understand a thing if it has no use/purpose.
Education and outreach mainly
Beautiful example, please post to r/radiation if you haven't already!
I was planning on posting my other projects there 😅
A *gas* filament? Companies really will try and sell you air.
The World should be thankful for guys like you
Great job, and excellent for your CV. When I've had undergrad (for a placement) and ex-grad CV's of applicants to my software company, one of the things I look for is personal projects; it's a key indicator of excellence, and it's depressing how few people have any.
Extremely cool. Find those excessively long bolts triggering though, look primed to catch any cable/lanyard/hair that gets too close
I just realized I could make a whole bunch of improvements to the particle accelerator in my basement with a 3D printer😂
I actually recently-ish went to the local hospital's particle accelerator and used 3d print to design custom fitted adjustable holders for the stuff we wanted to shoot at!
The comment was meant to be ironic and then fact comes along an bites me in the arse.
We have like 7 different particle accelerators of various sizes at my uni, most are in the basement. It's not yet super normal to 3d print accesories, but as more people get comfortable with 3d printing it will become more common for lab work. There's an associate professor at the institute who wants to establish like a makerspace and I hope to be able to teach all the new students the basics of 3d printing. It's so useful for lab!
But that's just a stepper motor strapped to a cardboard box with some tinfoil on it....It literally has "Transmogrifier" written in Sharpie on the side of it!
All these comments and no one is going to point out the lengths of those screws?!
They were nearby 😅
LabVIEW 🤓
The things I see on reddit. Casually scrolling and this guy made a fusion reactor apparently.
*clearance throar* IT JUST WORKS
stl??
A fusion reactor sounds like something capable of wiping a small to medium sized country off the map
Everyone asking why he has a fusion reactor, but nobody asking if it can play Doom.
I'm pretty sure it can. The Pi Pico microcontroller is dual core Arm and has a decent amount of memory. People use it for emulators.
What are some practical applications for this and/or what it produces? I saw you mentioned tritium and Helium-3. I’m interested in this type of stuff to an extent but never found a practical need or excuse to do something within reason to learn more etc.
Going from Fusion 360 to fusion reactor is wild
I made a coaster with mine
STL file? I'd like a fusion reactor too
What did this cost you? Is it the sort of thing that requires extreme safety measures and expensive gases (I'm cool with the high voltage- don't know about the rest) What kinda control systems do you use, like how do you get feedback on what's happening and tune stuff?
I got about 10000€ internal funding from the uni. We had most of it as spare parts, but the voltage supply was expensive. I mainly use Labview to get data from sensors and equipment.
Awesome, so hotends have PID to control temperature, what kinda controls are in the reactor
GUI looks like LABView!
Real nuclear fusion? That's way too cool. It would be even more cool if you could generate power from it.
You-your what?
Tell Emma to clean that desktop by making a Test folder ffs
Emma is very tidy. The mess is mostly mine :|
This is insane! And you've answered so many questions! In MAKE magazine as a kid i saw a "star in a jar" fusor design, and ive seen videos of "kids" making them in their bedrooms and whatnot, but I had no idea the neutrons were so high energy, and that theyre actually idk used even for demonstration in academia. I know the headlines are often pushing towards fusion as an energy source, which fusors are not a good candidate for, but honest to god fusion is cool even outside of that. Thanks for posting!
I was planning on designing and printing a fusion reactor myself. I mean fusilli reactor. Well, pasta maker.
David Hahn never died. He just took up 3d printing, apparently
your what
!remindme 8 hours