How to build a tabletop toroidal plasma device for public outreach and hands-on training

Altator is a table-top scale public outreach and graduate training plasma device entirely designed, built, and operated by students. Since first plasma is December 2023, Altator has been used extensively on tours to demonstrate to the public many of the concepts that are present in large-scale fusion experiments. This poster provides the details of Altator's construction for anyone interested in building a similar device. Altator's glass vacuum vessel was produced by Precision Glassblowing and features a 10 inch (25.4 cm) major radius and 2 inch (5 cm) minor radius. A roughing pump is used to reach pressures of ~25 mTorr at which point the RF is turned on. A single 13.56 MHz inductively coupled antenna is wound around the vacuum vessel and is able to produce adequately bright discharges. The 500 W RF supply was purchased from eBay. The RF matching network consists of a modified matching network purchased from Amazon and additional parts purchased from Digikey. An implosion shield and Faraday cage surround the vessel. The implosion shield is formed from 0.25 inch (6.4 mm) sheets of polycarbonate covering the sides and top of Altator. The Faraday cage is constructed from sheets of wire mesh attached to the polycarbonate and an additional sheet underneath Altator. The tablebase is built from plywood and 80/20 aluminum extrusions and is mounted on casters for easy relocation. Upgrades are underway to add a toroidal field coil system, and future upgrades will include diagnostics and alternative antenna configurations.