On 1/10/17 7:35 AM, Ole Petter Rønningen wrote:
... having said that, I for one think I'm with Bob on this one. The thing about masers are that they are big. At least active masers. And they require a substantial volume be kept at ultra high vacuum - which is not trivial, especially not in a homeshop. The cavity needs to be kept at a temperature stable to 0.001 degree C. With 4-5 magnetic shields. Add to this costly pumps to keep the vacuum this low even if you succeed at reaching that vacuum.. There's easily 1-2KUSD running cost per year just to keep the maser running.
Lots of people spend $4/day on coffee.. that's $1200/yr.. I'd give up a cup of coffee to run a AHM <grin>
Granted, I've never built a maser, but personally I think the problems that would need to solving (and lead to learning) would be much more on the vacuum-systems, shielding and temperature long before electronics becomes a major factor.
This fits in the bucket of a cross-disciplinary project, like building a fusor, or a pulsed TEA laser, a Bose-Einstein Condensate generator, or any of a variety of similar projects.
You can almost always find a commercial solution that can do it better/cheaper/more reliably - but the learning experience is valuable. I have almost zero desire to fool with high vacuum systems again, but the time I did it, I learned a lot.
And the chance of
actually get a result comparable to a commercial maser (or even just better than what you could realistically pick up from ebay for a few K) are pretty slim. And LOT of time and cash would be burned before you are even close to getting some sort of oscillation. A rubidium does look like a more realistic project.. Dont get me wrong - it would be beyond cool if someone built a homemade maser. The first ones were built by regular people in regular labs, so sure it can be done.
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