Nice collar you have there…

[zapkitty]

I presume it’s for structural support but even if it’s required to be solid metal it implies interesting things for cooling both cathode and anode…

[jamesr]

I was wondering about the collar as well. Other than the structural support which I too assumed was the primary function, it would short the ends of the cathodes together. Forcing equality in the electric potential of them all against any slight differences that build up due to feedback from the plasma interactions.
It would also allow the perpendicular components of the magnetic field around it to induce a current going round the collar.

These two interactions are just two ways of saying the same thing really since it is the current which will equalize the potential, but on different timescales, so you could have small current oscillations interacting at the frequencies of the order of the alfven, and magnetoacoustic waves in the surrounding plasma.

[Henning]

Can’t access Flickr at the moment, but I suspect it’s the knife-edge of the DPF you’re refering to: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=dense+plasma+focus+knife+edge&hl=de&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

See also http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2007/PF50-7-_03_07-CurrentTrends-bk.pdf from page 30 on.

It helps forming the initial plasma. BTW: A negative knife-edge affects the neutron count negatively. I don’t have the article at hand, but that’s what I remember. I think it was written by Brzosko et al.

Some more: “A slotted knife-edge around the insulator base was employed to enable operation at the higher pressure.”
http://www.space-nation.org/images/1/14/Prospects_for_p11B_fusion_with_the_Dense_Plasma_Focus_-_New_Results.pdf (page 2)

[zapkitty]

Henning wrote: Can’t access Flickr at the moment, but I suspect it’s the knife-edge of the DPF you’re refering to:

Nope… it’s a collar around the electrode rods at the business end of the core.

I’ll swipe it and post it here.

(I didn’t even notice the collar until the text in the flickr captions clued me in )

Attached files

[jamesr]

Given that it is on the outside of the cathodes and the ends are still slightly proud would mean it shouldn’t get in the way of the foot point of the current filament as they rise up the last bit of the cathode.

If it were purely for structural support, I wonder what difference it would make if it was made of an insulating material rather than metal?

[benf]

Seismic retrofit???

[Author]

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