Let me answer each of those questions at a time:
"I see no mention of any sort of interlock. You need a design so that you cannot open anything you shouldn't with the system energized. (And if you do, the system automatically shuts off)"
Because of time constraints, our entire safety system was not "prettied up" for the grant proposal and website. We do, however, have a design for a number of safety systems along this line. All of the electrical systems of the cyclotron will be in an enclosed space that is locked during operation (but still well ventilated by a system of fans. The system will also have a number of easy-access and automatic "fuse" systems that will shut down systems such as the magnets if overheating occurs or the hydrogen source if the vacuum level starts to fall.
"Also, you argue that you use AWG14 wire because its rated for 15 amps, and your design is for 14 amps with 10% ripple. Not only does this provide only a 7% margin, once you put your 10% ripple on it, you are now driving it beyond its specs.
My table says for power transmission, you need AWG10 (without any ripple); AWG14 is only good to 6 amps.
You say that heat is not a problem - without calculations. That's not convincing."
Again another item that was no covered explicitly in the online documents for time reasons (though I believe it was mentioned) is the cooling system for the magnets. There will be a system of copper tubing bringing cooled water over the coils at all times. In addition, we will only be running the cyclotron for short periods - a few seconds at a time - so magnet heating will be minimal anyway. These two considerations make the AWG14 wire safe.
"Finally, you have selected an energy high enough for nuclear processes to occur. So how do you know you haven't activated any of your equipment? And if it is activated, how do you plan on disposing of this radioactive waste?"
At all times the radiation level near the cyclotron will be measured and the machine will be turned off if any hazard is realized. Cyclotrons operating at much higher energy levels then ours (see the Rutgers link on our website) have had no problem with radiation and thus we don't expect to have any either. However, we have designed a a lead-covered box that the cyclotron will be placed into minimize even this small chance.
"Cost: In real life, projects need "contingency" - what do you do if the price of copper goes up? Or you discover you need AWG10 wire after you started making coils of AWG14? No large project - from home repair to building a cyclotron - is immune."
This is true. However, this is an issue any project must deal with. We have had our design inspected by several physicists, all of which offered suggestions but also seemed to think it would work.
"As an example, how do you plan to get the iron in the right shape? How do you plan to move and stack it? (Safely) This may well cost money."
Our cyclotron was designed with this in mind. We have access to a machining shop and have obtained the skills/help to do what we need to. The yoke was planned in such a way that it can be assembled fairly easily on-site; no piece weighs more than 90lbs and they can all be put together with simple bolts. Again these designs are not online, if you are interested I can email them to you.
"You don't say how big your magnet is, but given that your box is 34 x 39 cm, I used that. 6000 turns is just over 28,000 feet. That means the coils have a resistance of about 70 ohms, which means you need about 1000 V to get your 14 A. You don't have that with your setup."
We have run through these equations multiple times; the results are on our web page. Our system uses 240V wall current through a large transformer to provide the watts we need. If an unexpected problem occurs, we can also change the windings on the transformer fairly easily to adapt this design to different amperages.
"The original Lawrence one fit in the palm of your hand."
The issue with the original cyclotron is that it did hardly anything besides prove that it worked. This was our original plan, however we soon realized that in order to justify the costs of the project we needed to make a cyclotron that could actually perform experiments outside of the area of cyclotron resonance.
I hope that answered your questions. There is more information on all these systems in "draft" form that have not been scanned, however summaries of most of them are on the design document on our web page.
