Comments on: Fusion attempt live feed

By: John Miles

John Miles — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:53:51 +0000

“I wonder if they can be set off be EMI?”

Absolutely. Ever see someone light up a fluorescent tube by holding it near a ham radio transmitter, Tesla coil or VDG generator? The Geiger tube is literally designed to exploit that effect.

I powered up an X-ray tube with a Glassman supply awhile back and found that my Radalert counter would trigger just from the electrostatic field from the HV supply by itself.

By: John Miles

John Miles — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 05:50:48 +0000

Was your HV supply still running? Seems more likely that whatever RFI problem is crashing your DAQ is also ionizing the gas in the Geiger tube. Geiger counters are pretty twitchy.

By: Fusion Run Video « Prometheus Fusion Perfection

Fusion Run Video « Prometheus Fusion Perfection — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 23:38:48 +0000

[...] Fusion Run Video I’m excited to release a video summary of the most recent fusion run: [...]

By: ike

ike — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:12:08 +0000

it’s really hard to tell. m-m-m-m-ore daaaataaa

By: ike

ike — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 07:11:36 +0000

hm. maybe its the generated radioactive tritium getting pumped out of the vacuum chamber?

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:44:01 +0000

Interesting. I used to work in a semiconductor lab and we took measurements of sputter and electron beam deposition of metals using x-rays through a sample that went in with the wafers. We had radiation dosimeter name tags that were checked monthly for those of us that used the x-ray room. We had a few Geiger counters in the room. One of them was flaky and it occasionally would give off a burst of static sometimes which was never really a radiation leak. There were vacuum pumps all around too, like in the Balzers. I wonder if they can be set off be EMI? Or even directly the little speaker on them. Maybe your pump is emitting lots of noisy radio waves.

By: FAMULUS

FAMULUS — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:57:38 +0000

The probe is:

model: HP-260
serial: RN015638

By: FAMULUS

FAMULUS — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:47:08 +0000

New hypothesis on those geiger outbursts:

It’s the vacuum pump!

This afternoon I’m listening to the geiger count background with the system off.

When I turn on the vacuum pump I begin to get outbursts form the geiger counter.

I don’t have numbers for this yet, but I can hear it for sure.

By: FAMULUS

FAMULUS — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:30:15 +0000

Makes me nervous too!

I have a new USB geiger counter coming on friday for comparison.

Who knows, may be something unrelated to the experiment.

By: Joe

Joe — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:27:06 +0000

Famulus…

Incredible work you are doing!

I just wanted to say that geiger counter going off like that make me nervous. Take a lot of care with the potential for X-ray exposure. Maybe you should get another counter or two and keep them with you in the ‘safe’ area you are running the experiment from. That way you can be sure that your body is not getting exposed, even when the one pointing into the fusor is clicking.