Personal projects / Materials & heat
Microwave-plasma furnace
An exploratory furnace using microwave-excited plasma to heat ruby feedstock.
Open the numbered review →Chamber, feed system, and trials
Photos 128–132
An experimental attempt to use microwave-excited plasma as the heat source for ruby-growth trials. I recovered small fluorescent pieces that I interpreted as ruby, but the heating process was difficult to control. This remained an exploratory prototype with unresolved questions about containment and repeatability.
A view inside the experimental microwave furnace, showing firebrick and high-temperature ceramic insulation. These materials were part of my effort to retain heat around the small reaction chamber during the early trials.
The complete prototype, including the external feed hardware visible above the enclosure. I was exploring a way to introduce the sample material during heating, but the process still needed much better control.
Another view of the microwave-furnace experiment with the door closed. The photographs record an early prototype in the wider series of trials exploring different heat sources for crystal-growth experiments.
The bright glow from a trial using an inverted borosilicate-glass funnel. I wanted the heat concentrated within the refractory chamber, but this arrangement exposed the limitations of the containment approach. It was one of several early experiments that still needed better control.