This diagram shows the possible coil configurations of the superconducting tape. Going from minor radius 2 mm at top to minor radius 7 mm at bottom.
I used the very cool XRVG to generate SVG diagrams from ruby.
Possible Polywells
15 11 2010Comments : Leave a Comment »
Categories : coils, Superconducting Magrid, superconductors
Fire the coils!
30 05 2010Here is a video of firing the coils:
Comments : 4 Comments »
Categories : coils, Sydney Experiment
Coil Power Supply 10 Cap Test
8 05 2010Today I did a full 10 capacitor 450V test fire of the coil power supply into the coils:
No problems, everything went well.
On a disappointing note… it looks like Goddamn vacuum pump is broken again: the vent value going into the turbo pump is stuck open, allowing atmosphere to flow into the chamber. Maybe I fried the valve with a voltage spike.
Comments : 4 Comments »
Categories : coils, polywell, Power Supply, Sydney Experiment
Coils Formed
25 02 2010I received the 18 AWG (1mm diameter) magnet wire today. Now we have actual coils. 10 turns each coil:
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Categories : coils, Sydney Experiment
Coil Former Complete
16 02 2010
I plan to replace the screws with stainless steel screws and clean it all in muriatic acid before putting it in a vacuum.
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Categories : coils, polywell, Sydney Experiment
Coil Former Progress
15 02 2010Did some more work on the coil formers. Stuart and I used the computer controlled milling machine to precisely drill the holes. First we mount the teflon coil former in a chuck:
Then we center the spindle:
Drill the holes:
Next we take some aluminum angle bracket:
Drill the holes:
And tap:
Assemble:
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Categories : coils, polywell, Sydney Experiment
Coil Power Supply
13 02 2010Joe Khachan just sent me details on the power supply for the coils. They are designed to produce a brief high current pulse.
Joe says:
The part that took the most time to build was the power supply. I’ve attached a diagram that looks something like our circuit without dump resistor to dump charge of the capacitors when we need to service them. We used a hockey puck type of SCR (a type of thyristor) that can take 1000 A continuous or 10 kA pulsed. This may have been an overkill because we found that a maximum of 300 A was needed. However, we may need higher current as we increase the size of the polywell. The capacitor bank was make of 5 X 1500 microFarads electrolytic capacitors that can take a maximum of 450V all connected in parallel. You need some kind of transformer that can step up the voltage from the mains and be able to charge the capacitors within a couple of seconds. That means it shoud be a reasonably hefty transformer. We control the voltage output of the transformer with a Variac on the input side. You need to protect the SCR from back EMF with a diode across it. The diode should be able to take a few amps. The wire diameter about one millimeter and there were 10 turns per former.
Joe’s coil power supply looks like this:
Here is the preliminary bill of material (click for Mouser produce page):
1500 microFarads electrolytic capacitors max 450V
Silicon-controlled rectifier (SCR)
Diode Diode to protect the SCR from back EMF
Step-up Transformer Step-up Transformer
100 watt 2KΩ resistor for bleeding capacitor bank
Rack mountable chassis.
Please comment if you notice wrong parts.
Comments : 12 Comments »
Categories : coils, polywell, Power Supply, Sydney Experiment
Coil Formers
12 02 2010My shop-mate Stuart machined these coil formers from a teflon rod:
Here is a time lapse video of Stuart machining the formers on the lathe:
Next we have to drill four holes in each former and connected them with angle brackets.
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Categories : coils, Fabrication, Sydney Experiment
Coil Former Dimentions
9 02 2010Here are the final dimensions of the coil former:
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Categories : coils, polywell, Sydney Experiment
New Copper Coil Polywell on the Scene
25 12 2009Researchers at the University of Sydney have made a small Polywell device which looks like this:
Powerpoint slides of their research here.
Notice there is no metal exterior on the magrid. As far as I understand… instead of using a magrid with a shell at positive potential (like the WB6 does), they are shooting in electrons with kinetic energy from an electron gun.
This seems like a feasible way to build a copper coil polywell. If the researchers are willing and able to share the details of the experiment, I would explore replicating the device and results. It looks manageable:
Comments : 14 Comments »
Categories : coils, polywell, Sydney Experiment
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