All Photos (1/2)
All Photos (2/2)
The capacitor bank which powers the coils is very lethal; when fully charged, it dumps more than a megawatt into the coils. Needless to say, If I were to accidentally complete the circuit through my body, it would rearrrange my insides. To decrease the likelihood of such an occorence, I’ve done my best to idiot-proof it. Here’s how it looked before:
Pretty easy to thoughtlessly reach in and touch the dangerous parts.
So first, I took a broken shipping pallet that someone across the street was throwing away, and made a box out of it
The box fits nicely on the crate that we’ve been using as a controls stand
I also left the front partially open so they we could get at the controls
With this setup, the only thing you can touch is wood, plastic controls, and the grounded metal face of the box, so it would be pretty hard to blow your hand off.
The next step was making the HVDC out wires safer. (the fat green and yellow ones in the first pic) The way we had it, the only way to dissconnect them was to reach into the supply and unscrew the ring terminlas to which they were connected. Not great. To fix this, I installed a high current outlet onto the back of the box and connected some shorter wires.
The other hole is where the cord which plugs into the wall goes
Took the wires we had and connected them to a matching high current plug
Assembled (and labeled):
So now it’s pretty safe. In fact, it’s so safe that getting into the power supply at all istoo much of a pain. We don’t want to have to move this box every time we need to reset the breaker. To make access easier, I put hinges on the bottom of it (see above), and chains on the side, so it opens like a tool box.
MakerBot mailed me an iron-on patch with some supplies I ordered, so I taped it on for good luck. (top right)
Look’s pretty badass, kinda like a ten-cylinder car engine.
Here’s one more safety feature I added:
If you open the “hood”, the power cord is automatically pulled out. This way, it’s impossible to open the power supply while it’s plugged in.
The coil supply is idiot-proof, but isn’t so locked down that minor repairs and upgrades are too much of a hassle. This is one more step towards a streamlined, repeatable, experiment procedure.
Domenick Bauer
Prometheus Fusion Perfection 