The first part of the fusor construction has dealt with creating a vacuum chamber. In order for the fusion reactions to work, a reasonably high vacuum is needed (on the order of 20 to 40 microns). In order to get this vacuum, two things are needed: a good pump (or system of pumps) and a chamber that is vacuum-tight. I managed to scavenge an Alcatel roughing pump, which I will use for the proof-of-concept fusor. For the second iteration, I will incorporate a turbomolecular pump that one of the professors was kind enough to loan me.
As for the chamber, I bought two large, stainless steel mixing bowls with flat flanges to be the main body. The first order of business was making a connector so that the chamber could be attached to the pump. In order to do this, the lab manager and I machined a cylinder of aluminum so that one side could be J-B welded (epoxied) to one of the bowls and the other side would be a connecting flange to the pump hose attachment.
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