Solid state SSG

[Thanos]

Greetings,
I have build an SS SSG from an SSG monopole circuit conversion. It seems to have been tuned ok at the moment and does it's job as it is supposed to.
I would like to upgrade to a six or more filar circuit and on youtube i have found two diagrams.
One from min2oly and one from blackchisel97.

Between those two there are some major differences.
I was wondering if some of you could provide on this thread some of your diagrams, the final and working ones, so as to proceed to the construction of the circuit.
It would be nice to have a thread dedicated for this device and it would also be nice if we could join as a team so as to improve it through experimentation.

With regards,

Thanos

[Tom C]

Greetings,
I have build an SS SSG from an SSG monopole circuit conversion. It seems to have been tuned ok at the moment and does it's job as it is supposed to.
I would like to upgrade to a six or more filar circuit and on youtube i have found two diagrams.
One from min2oly and one from blackchisel97.

Between those two there are some major differences.
I was wondering if some of you could provide on this thread some of your diagrams, the final and working ones, so as to proceed to the construction of the circuit.
It would be nice to have a thread dedicated for this device and it would also be nice if we could join as a team so as to improve it through experimentation.

With regards,

Thanos

use patricks (min2oly)

Tom C

[Rob_Esq]

Patrick's SS SG

use patricks (min2oly)

Tom C

Hi. I've just built the SS along the lines of Patrick's SS, with the cap/diode modification. I haven't got the two big caps on the front and back end like he has though. I'm wondering two things: firstly, what are the function of these in the circuit?; second, I've just googled 3300mF 350V capacitors, as used by Patrick, and they're £60-100 each!! Is it necessary to have such big, expensive caps, or can you / someone recommend a cheaper alternative?

Cheers .. R

[Anastasios]

Hi Rob,
As a cheaper alternative, you can find some pretty good deals on these caps on eBay.
I located one guy for you here:
2900UF 350V DC AEROVOX ELECTROLYTIC CAPACITORS | eBay
This fellow sells them for about £15.00 each

Take care

[Thanos]

Capacitors

Hello,
I have bought mine from ebay also.
It had no charge for postage.

[Martin B]

Picked up 2 nichicon 10,000uF 400v from the scrapyard yesterday. Lucky day...
I was charged according to weight!!! 190nt$(New Taiwan Dollar) or about 6.30US$ for them and a few other things. lol.
Love the Taiwanese scrapyards!
Martin B

[bluestix]

I haven't tested COP on mine yet but I would guess it is probably over 1.

[BobZilla]

I have one I use to charge two 75 AH batteries with one 100 AH on a regular basis. The primary still has more juice at the end but I just charge it back up for the next run.

In early testing I was charging one 75 AH with the other and again the primary still had more juice.

This charger works very well and I suspect if I had made more power legs it would do even better. It has three strands of 18 AWG 200 ft. One is used for the trigger and two for power. Also using Patrick's cap diode mod.

I plan to build a bigger version of this where I will use 4 power windings to capitalize on the branch diode design more.

Here is a shot of the 2 transistor model.

[John_Koorn]

How are people tuning their SS SG's? I've never read a definitive guide to tuning a SS SG and would be interested on what methods people are using.

I pretty much tune to the C20 rate of the primary, as long as nothing apart from the main base resistor gets hot.

John K.

[min2oly]

All else being equal, I tune to BTDC of resonance, keeping within temperature and C20 tolerances.
-KR
Patrick

[BobZilla]

@Mike
Yes I was running the charge batteries down to 11.5 for a long time but at the advise of another member I have recently started running them only to about 12 or 11.9 somewhere around there. When I would start them at 11.5 I don't think I was getting quite a full charge on them, very usable but it was not getting that big push at the end to really top them off. Since I have been keeping around 12v instead they do charge back up more fully. They will climb to around 14.9 on while charging then i stop the charge and they rest back down at around 12.7.

These are not flooded batteries, they are AGM's. I'm sure that makes a difference in how they react. I don't know that they are any better or worse but as we all know AGM's behave a little different. It does take a long time to charge them but they are big batteries. Usually it will take 24 to 36 hours to complete a charge.

The primary is a 100 AH AGM and its c20 discharge rate is 5 amps to 10.5V.

@John
I am running 750Ohm 1/4watt resistors on the base and a Mega-OHM pot along with the diode coming off the pot. The capacitor is a 1uf AC.

The mega ohm pot is way overkill for this system though. I initially put it on there because I was scared to turn up the juice on this thing. If you have seen Patrick's video where he goes past the threshold and blows his LED panel, well that is what I was scared of. With the big pot on the system I can turn the resistance way up and charge small batteries like 5 - 10 AH just fine but to get the big ones charging I relax the pot almost all the way.

When I first start a charge I only have the pot set to about 250 OHM. AS the primary voltage goes down over time I relax the pot to keep the charging steady, by the end of the charge I will have the pot fully open and will really only be utilizing the base and diode.

This coil is an air coil BTW. If I listen to the circuit with a radio and turn the resistance high I will hear the familiar Pop, Pop, Pop, and can adjust that faster and faster BUT as soon as I lower the pot about 1/8th of a turn or so the frequency jumps way up and becomes a steady hum. It is in that range that I charge large batteries. If I want to charge small ones I will keep it back where I can hear distinguished pop, pop.

If I put an amp meter in the primary path to monitor the draw will be 50 to 150 ma when I am on "low" meaning with the high resistance on the pot. I rarely use this setting on this machine because I have othe machines to charge smaller batteries. As I lower the resistance it will quickly jump from 150 ma up to about 900 or so, this is the range I charge the large batteries in. There are some sweet spots at the high end but with that mega pot they are very difficult to dial in.

As I slowly decrease resistance at that high end I will see the draw go from 900ma up to an amp.. then 1.1, 1.2,,, then a sweet spot where it will fall back again to 900 or so. There are two sweet spots that I have observed. I really need to change out the pot for a 1k so I have better range on the dial.

So for normal charging of large batteries what I do is find the second sweet spot where I will be pulling between 950 ma and 1.1 amp. I will run there for most of the charge but as I said, eventually the primary will start to drop and I have to compensate on the dial to keep in that sweet spot. By the end of the charge I will have relaxed the pot as far as it can go.


Sorry if I am speaking too fast or not clearly enough. I am trying to get this response out quickly because I have to get to work.

[min2oly]

@Mike
Yes I was running the charge batteries down to 11.5 for a long time but at the advise of another member I have recently started running them only to about 12 or 11.9 somewhere around there. When I would start them at 11.5 I don't think I was getting quite a full charge on them, very usable but it was not getting that big push at the end to really top them off. Since I have been keeping around 12v instead they do charge back up more fully. They will climb to around 14.9 on while charging then i stop the charge and they rest back down at around 12.7.

These are not flooded batteries, they are AGM's. I'm sure that makes a difference in how they react. I don't know that they are any better or worse but as we all know AGM's behave a little different. It does take a long time to charge them but they are big batteries. Usually it will take 24 to 36 hours to complete a charge.

The primary is a 100 AH AGM and its c20 discharge rate is 5 amps to 10.5V.

@John
I am running 750Ohm 1/4watt resistors on the base and a Mega-OHM pot along with the diode coming off the pot. The capacitor is a 1uf AC.

The mega ohm pot is way overkill for this system though. I initially put it on there because I was scared to turn up the juice on this thing. If you have seen Patrick's video where he goes past the threshold and blows his LED panel, well that is what I was scared of. With the big pot on the system I can turn the resistance way up and charge small batteries like 5 - 10 AH just fine but to get the big ones charging I relax the pot almost all the way.

When I first start a charge I only have the pot set to about 250 OHM. AS the primary voltage goes down over time I relax the pot to keep the charging steady, by the end of the charge I will have the pot fully open and will really only be utilizing the base and diode.

This coil is an air coil BTW. If I listen to the circuit with a radio and turn the resistance high I will hear the familiar Pop, Pop, Pop, and can adjust that faster and faster BUT as soon as I lower the pot about 1/8th of a turn or so the frequency jumps way up and becomes a steady hum. It is in that range that I charge large batteries. If I want to charge small ones I will keep it back where I can hear distinguished pop, pop.

If I put an amp meter in the primary path to monitor the draw will be 50 to 150 ma when I am on "low" meaning with the high resistance on the pot. I rarely use this setting on this machine because I have othe machines to charge smaller batteries. As I lower the resistance it will quickly jump from 150 ma up to about 900 or so, this is the range I charge the large batteries in. There are some sweet spots at the high end but with that mega pot they are very difficult to dial in.

As I slowly decrease resistance at that high end I will see the draw go from 900ma up to an amp.. then 1.1, 1.2,,, then a sweet spot where it will fall back again to 900 or so. There are two sweet spots that I have observed. I really need to change out the pot for a 1k so I have better range on the dial.

So for normal charging of large batteries what I do is find the second sweet spot where I will be pulling between 950 ma and 1.1 amp. I will run there for most of the charge but as I said, eventually the primary will start to drop and I have to compensate on the dial to keep in that sweet spot. By the end of the charge I will have relaxed the pot as far as it can go.


Sorry if I am speaking too fast or not clearly enough. I am trying to get this response out quickly because I have to get to work.

Bob - regarding your tuning:

very nice!
Kind Regards,
Patrick

[BobZilla]

@ mike
I personally am just now starting to play with cap dumping so my understanding is very limited until I get some experience playing with it. I do recall seeing what I think you are describing, maybe not exactly though. What comes to mind is a system that Rick Friedrick made with a fan. He seemed more interested in the mechanical outputs in his systems so his fan was meant to basically run from one battery and charge the second, then he could flip them around and keep the fan going. so his real gain was just having that continuous mechanical output and no so much focus on charging batteries (other than too keep the system running).

[BobZilla]

@ Mike
Mike take a look at this video, not the whole thing, watch the first few min so you can see the thing in operation then skip up to 29 min where he talks about his cap dump.

Fan.wmv - YouTube


I did understand what you were asking and this system does exactly that, it uses a cap to re-gauge radiant into "normal juice"

Originally you asked,,

My question is does anyone radiantly charge a cap dump that positively charges any or all batteries, run and charge and can see both the front and the back batteries climb up as they are reversed.

Ricks system is doing what you asked is it not?

He uses it to run a fan but the same concept could be used on an SS setup, it is the re-gauge and swap function that I though your were interested in.

I'm a bit lost on the rest of your math etc that you just posted but that's just me, not your fault. Anyway maybe this is not what your talking about but I got the impression that you may have misunderstood what I was trying to point out about that system.

It puts capacitors on the charge side to re-gauge and then charge batteries and that allows him to use either side as a primary when he throws his switches.

[BobZilla]

@Mike

Yes you are doing find Bob I am taking my liberty to rant. I will look at the vid and let you know what I think. In an earlier post did you say you were able to get more out than in without a cap. Yes this is unclear.

If a person uses a cap and simply parallels a battery to it the energy is re-gauged, isn't it?

On the machine I have been talking about in this thread, I do not have a cap for any charging leg. The only cap is in the trigger path across the pot. I am beginning to experiment with using caps as part of the charging process but not on this machine, this is my primary charger. It works so well for me that I decided awhile back to leave it just as it is.

The question about parallel cap on output (or input) is one I was wondering about myself. I had posed the question over in another thread and Patrick suggested that I do some experiments. I am in the process of doing that now. I am going to be charting results from a normal run on a mechanical machine as a baseline and then I am going to add a parallel cap and compare those results. The third test will be using the parallel cap charged batteries on the front to see if the cap is allowing them to be swapped. I will elaborate more on the tests and method when I actually post about that.

Mike it's all good man. I come here to participate with others who tinker with these devices and share experiences. I may not always have something of value to add because I am still pretty green but I always have good intentions.

One thing to understand about my posts is that I do have many different setups so when I talk about one method or something I am trying; it is not always on the same system.

Anyway thanks to everyone who forms our little community here!