Neutrons!

 Hello,
Yesterday I successfully achieved fusion at 11:30 am, this was brilliant! I am waiting from fusor.net for conformation that i have actually done fusion but looking at the results I am almost certain I have.

The following images shows me operating it the reactor

 The reactor consists of many parts, some of the main ones include the vacuum pumps, high voltage supply, vacuum chamber and deutirium system.


I would like to thank the following people for helping me financially or by providing technical support.

Mr Hourigan - for authorization and funding 

Mrs Honeyman - project manager/risk assessor and for giving up her time 

George Barker - for being my PA and blogging my story 

R & B Switch gear - for helping with safety and parts for the high voltage especially Robbie Newton and Tony Taylor 

Tim Abram at Manchester university for lending me the neutron detector 

Pro alloy for constructing the gas reservoir and valve

Fusor.net for helping with problem solving and sourcing gear 

Carol Darbyshire, Raj Bhanot and Ian Grant at Springfields for helping with the radioactive health and safety and lending me the metering devices 

Dr K at MIRCE Akademy for helping with my initial plans 

Austin Dunne at Infrared institute for lending me some infrared thermographic equipment 

Mr Dever for his photography 

Site supervisors for tidying up my work area 

Mr Barker for the lead shielding 

Science and Technology department for helping with last minute engineering problems

And last but not least my parents for their help and support

 
I will upload some more pictures soon

Jamie

Reactor completion

Today I finished the reactor. I finished of bits of the high voltage system of and put the feedthroughs on the chamber. I am waiting now for me to go on a radiation saftey training course before I can operate the reactor fully.
Below is a photo of me with my completed reactor

Vacuum success

After many hours finding leaks in my chamber I have finally achieved a vacuum of 0.1*10^-5 torr. This a very good pressure for the vacuum chamber to reach and is almost perfect for doing fusion. I would like to thank R&B Switchgear for supplying a three phase inverter for the mechanical pump.

The above picture shows the guage right at the bottom of its scale showing the chamber is in vacuum.

Control panel

I have stayed late over the last few nights at school making my control panel, as seen below.

This panel is where I will control the reactor from. On the panel so far is the metering for the high voltage and current. And switches for all the vacuum pumps. Still to be attached is the vacuum guage controller, viewing for the reactor and nuetron detection.

Progress

Finaly I am picking up pace on my project and have made some progress. The following pictures show my progress:

New inner grid

Hello,
I have designed a new inner grid for my Fusor. For those who don't know the inner grid is a wire grid that is charged to a very high negative voltage. I have made the new grid from 1.5mm mild steel instead of 0.1mm tungsten. The tungsten was very hard to shape to the right shape for the grid as it had a tendency to snap and was very brittle.