Deez has returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic for a wedding and solo hike. Sounds like he had an amazing time. Parts arrived and we made progress today. We cut the ceramic tube on a neighbor’s wet saw:
We tested out the collar clamp. Seems to work. Feels mechanically solid and tightly clamped metal should have good electrical conductivity.
Here is the assembled core connected to feedthrough. Really amazing how many tiny and challenging steps this takes:
The cable for the power supply arrived. I had to cut it down by 5 inches to make it fit mechanically with this unit. Then you stick a brass tack into the conductor. It pushes against a spring loaded contact in the Glassman unit. This cable is essentially a high voltage co-axle cable. The exterior shielding of the cable is grounded to the chassis, and forms a Faraday Cage around the inner high voltage. It appears the cable is long enough to go right into the fusor.
We poked into the RGA unit again, and found we bought the wrong swageloc end cap. We still haven’t found the correct swagelock yet. A separate post on this topic later.