Plasma Systems:

Your guide to plasma systems.

     Plasma is another word for high energy density. In this case it means a gas cavitation (gas super heated to the 4th state of matter) that is developed between the two metal electrodes that is of use for vaporization of the metal we wish to turn into a colloid.  This is all done under water as that is our deposition target.

Over the years I have made a wide range of arc discharge and plasma systems from large scale professional to personal use, each one a step leading up to the next release of production that should be available in the next 9-12 months.

     Currently I am offering the older 2.0 Production system at substantial discount in lieu of the final design that will go into production for personal use.  For only a few hundred dollars over the end cost of the newer personal systems that will come. This is to your advantage to order one while I make this limited time offer to own a professional system for nearly a personal system price.

For information purposes I list the sequence of plasma systems:

Large Scale Plasma Systems:

1.0: The very first Plasma Class system.

2.0: The second Generation of Plasma Class Systems.

Variations: The 2.0 Plasma Systems went through a series of developments that were never properly detailed in publicaton however the primary variations were in cooling and electrode array mods that are too numerous to list during the development process.

Primarily Air cooling was found to be the best method so all systems to this day embody some form of what you see here:

     This is one of the very first prototype air coolers... but this gives you an idea of where things were going to aid in cooling the business end of the systems power conversion.  This is a special core cooled transformer something that is exceptionally important in what makes these power supplies so well suited for the purpose of plasma generation. 

Normal power supplies would smoke and become book ends in a few minutes under the same use.  These are highly specialized components that have run solid through the entire history of plasma production systems.

Mid Range Plasma and Personal Systems:

Firefly: My first go at a new ultra compact design that offered the same output of the larger systems for personal use.

Phoenix: This would have been a miniature version of the Thunderbird class with limited run duriation (for cool down) but otherwise had the potential to run the same vapor rates as the 2.0 plasma systems.

Thunderbird: I call this Military grade only because no other description seems proper.  With vapor rates that ran into 10mg per minute (seriously, that is a 1 liter volume at 100ppm in 10 minutes and it could do that without overheating in a package that only weighs under 15 pounds) this system is unmatched in capacity, size, simplicity and low power consumption per unit of colloidal gold generated.

The current revamp on all designs comes for a number of practical reasons some of which have to do with limitations on parts availability (developing an in house transformer building setup) and a lack of uniformity on production itself.  I am one person so without elves to help me build these I need uniformity of parts to compensate if I ever want to see day light.

My Original Cg Machine taught me all about what it takes to produce an actual line of systems.  It follows with the question: 'How can one person make all this equipment?'

The original Cg Machine (never named it) was a point discharge arc/vapor system with cartridges that were replaceable, disposable and with the idea that a person of limited physical capacity could easily replace the cartridge. (magnetic lock, get the cartridge within .5'' and it grabbed the cartridge and locked it into place without any effort)

     The electrode gap was auto adjusted by a mechanical computer that (seriously, I went overboard but this was my lesson) self adjusted and trimmed the electrodes for every run while also set with 3 safety interlocks to prevent the system from running if it detected an open door, low water level and the process head had to be locked into run position. 

(few!, safety came first but at 160 individual machined micro parts as the head assembly and a black box that you could use as a jack stand that could easily support the weight of a mid sized family car this was no less than the space shuttle of colloidal gold machines..)

    There was no way I was going to make this work for production but it set the tone for future designs.. unified machine architectures, parts, and assemblies must be dead simple and free of time consuming nuances such as 160 parts that needed to be within .0001'' in order to work properly and 3 complete axis of machined surfaces under such low tolerance for deviation.

     When you consider design never forget that the design has to be labor efficient.. for large corporations it means profit, for individuals it means having a life outside of making a production line run.  Just something to consider... the Thunderbird (for example) still required 40-60 hours per unit to build however the time goes down per unit when I would make several at once. 

The object is to evolve tooling setups to where a series of parts can be made exactly identical (fit any unit without adjustment) and at one shot.  The work that goes into one unit can be used to make 10 at the same time.

This is what production theory is about and what I mean when I say production...

Lastly, assembly is also a factor of the original design because even if all the parts are made right you still need to assemble each unit.  While unsung this step is the most important and exactly where you can spend days doing work that should only take 1 day.. it's like the difference between cooking at home where someone labors over the 4 dishes for 4 hours but in a commercial environment the same work is done in 15 minutes or less for 80 dishes.

All photos content are copyright(c)2010,2011 Karl K Reinhart

Free distribution without alteration (and include a source link to this site)