JimmyT wrote:

WOW! Just the 1st para looks like the machine I’ve been looking for over in the CVD marketplace. It also gave me some ideas for the onion, since it should be able to handle a drum-shaped blank.

I’m wondering if maybe the best way to build an onion is like orange slices. Design and build 1 slice. Repeat 40 times then fit them together. Could be sphere or cylinder, or anything in between.

To prove and test in a lab, using hand-laid foils, I’d use 4 to 8 panels for a boxy looking onion. Several panel formulations would be needed to capture over 90% of the X-ray energy, and then all of those panels would need to be stacked in a structurally sound manner that allows for cooling. All of this takes place inside the vacuum chamber, by the way, unless it, too, becomes beryllium.

Mass production units should be around 200 slats. Eric hinted at that near the end of the patent, due to the onion’s structural and cooling requirements. I can see the final price of a FF generator being tied directly to the degree of automated fabrication and assembly of the onion.