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CPD mod - capacitor potentiometer diode modification
Thought I may as well get it started:
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John K,
I get it now, voc is rated higher than the 24V. So on your solar setup, it's my sense that your cap is too big for even the cpd mod to help.
If your cap takes too long to charge to 40v then you'll need something else in addition, to fend off the oscillations from happening at lower voltages. This is the balancing act between the primary cap vs the trigger cap - the diode plays a very important role here as well.
I have used a zener on the base with the vanilla SS SSG as well as the resistor voltage divider method to keep the primary cap high prior to oscillations. the CPD mod doesn't like the zener much, but this might help w/ the setup you have as is... Hope all goes well.
Kind Regards,
Patrick A. -
Alright - so here's a vid on taking the SSG wheel and turning it sold state. For those who have not done it yet. it's very simple, you just take the bottom trigger lead, remove it from the primary negative/emitter and place it on the primary positive.
Warning!
before you do this, you MUST increase the resistance to the base of the transistor.
start w/ a 20k pot, make sure you have an additional fixed resistor inline to the base. This will help if the POT burns or you accidently lower the resistance too much.
Hope this helps - Kind Regards,
Patrick A.Comment
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Here is part 2:
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Super glad you posted these back up Patrick. These exact two videos were a huge inspiration for my tinkering with SS,,,ThanksComment
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I'm going to start to answer your question here to keep the cpd stuff in one place in case it helps others.
I think I understand what you are describing. so when you are turning the pot that is in parallel w/ the cap down/lower resistance, you hear the individual pop pop, then all of a sudden you get to a point where you hear high freq.
This means your cap is too large, you should get the full range like I try to describe in vid 2 here.
so what is happening there at the "point of no return" where it goes into crazy high oscillations. very simple, this is a complementary Parallel RLC circuit. Once you pass the point of resonance you may as well not have the cap there at all. It is doing nothing.
try the same type of cap (I like those) but smaller. Maybe 1uf, I do like the big yellows best for these size coils though.
Remember though we are balancing the cap w/ the power coils. In other words, we do not want the cap so small that the power winds do not fill up. Once you are in resonance, your cpd cap will fill up for free (IMHO).
I hope this helps - Kind Regards,
Patrick A.
Originally posted by BobZilla View PostComment
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I appreciate the feedback...
In the video I shot you can see when I run on the 5.5uf I have full control at low speed,, pop, pop, pop, Very good tuning but the issue is VERY little charging is happening and very little input. The only way to get any charging is to go to the point of no return so to say and go into the hi frequency. I hate to ask but can you watch that video again and perhaps you will see what I am saying about it.I think I understand what you are describing. so when you are turning the pot that is in parallel w/ the cap down/lower resistance, you hear the individual pop pop, then all of a sudden you get to a point where you hear high freq.
This means your cap is too large, you should get the full range like I try to describe in vid 2 here.
By the way I did use a 1uf but not in that video, it also works nice just like the 5.5 but slightly different level, what I mean is it has nice range too but only extremely low input. If you watch that video I do show the primary a bit as I am adjusting. I have no problem getting slow controlled oscillation on the cap but it wouldn't charge anything like that.Comment
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It was late last night when I made my first response so I wanted to just comment a bit more.
I do understand what you mean about the proper size to saturate the coil. The way this seems to work is the energy builds up in the cap until it's impedance/resistance falls lower than the pot so it dumps, then the impedance on the cap shifts so it begins filling again until it becomes looser than the pot again and it releases.
That is why I was trying the larger caps which did have the effect of taking longer to dump and to some extent they were enough to saturate the coils when they did dump. We see that when the 320uf dumps the draw goes up too half an amp or so,, the larger cap went to about an amp.
Anyway I appreciate your effort to troubleshoot.
The one you are running on your bank,, again does it go Pop, Pop, or is it whining at a high frequency? My trouble is I can get a slow pop but it is not enough to charge with. What sort of draw does your system use off that solar, an amp or so?Comment
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I'm assuming you remove that meter from the output during charging right? It's a nice tool and great to see some of the effects, I would never use it to tune straight off the SSG ckt however. This mod does not use much current to charge the battery.
Have you tried using a microphone to hook up to your PC sound card? This might help with tuning.
http://science-notebook.com/sound01....ith_A_Computer
This is also an excellent program
http://www.sillanumsoft.org/
I just played around with it a bit:
I'm not sure how much it will help with solid state, the freq's can get high. you can use it to play back my vid of the big coil in the garage to get the freq (it is audible to my ear) - no sun today, maybe later. It's still operating just not at high input. I have never measured the amps, I tune to the solar panel to it's maximum output. so the panel has a voc of 18.5, I never let it get that high - this is how I know I'm using all the panel can put out whatever that is :-)
I watched your vid again just in case I missed something. I'm pretty sure I understand what you are saying about charging at low freq. You do have excellent control at low freq. Now you need to get control at a higher freq. In order to do that you need a lower cap value.
Since you said you already tried a 1uF, other things that come to mind are: The branch resistor, are you using one? What is it's value? What is the value of your individual base resistors? Maybe you could steal a wind to put in parallel w/ your trigger winding, you might not be getting enough "umph" (did I just say that :-)
What I go for when I tune this SS it to give a good smack to the base of the transistor, not too long not too short and with enough strength to connect the emitter and collector quick on quick off. I try to do this as much as possible at resonance so the switching is free.
OK, I have much more to say, however, this post is getting long and confusing I think... I'll wait for more info.
LMK - KR,
Patrick A.
Originally posted by BobZilla View PostComment
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Hi Patrick,
Hey bud I really appreciate all of your help and going all out making more video. I have come up with something else for the moment for triggering, by now you know I favor that micro controller. I have used that thing for so many configurations and now we can add trigger control to that list. I am going to post something over on my thread if your interested it should be up later tonight.
I don't want to muck up this thread with my method since this is exclusively about CPD.Comment
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Hey Patrick,
wanted to ask about the big blue caps you have across both batteries in ur cpd mod vids? Do they help the charging in some way? What is their purpose? I have ran my ss sg and had good results with out the caps but I do have a few of them to i will be trying it out. I am almost done converting a UPS into a SS SG charger box. I'll post a vid on that asap.
Also, have you done any work with Tesla Impulse Technology...I saw in on one of the Energy From the Vaccum DVD's and looks really cool. Good Ol' BroMikey has gotten into it abit...
http://youtu.be/ZSppzzXWG6c
Cheers
JoeComment
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Hi Bob,
before you abandon ship, give the extra trigger wire a shot w/ the 1uF and a branch potentiometer. There is more balancing to be done w/ the mod than at first glance.
I look forward to your microcontroller work. Especially want to see how you accomplished that dump boost thing.
Kind Regards,
Patrick
Originally posted by BobZilla View PostComment
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Hi Joster,
Those caps are necessary on the solar to accumulate energy from the panel between pulses. There is no need for them on the battery powered builds, I just happen to have them laying around, I saw JB use one on his pendulum and I thought "so that the EYE OF THE IGNORANT MAY NOT PERCEIVE INSIDE THE CASE" :-)
If you are using a power supply, the caps will help smooth out the spikes and save your power supply.
I gave a lame try at those tesla impulse coils a few years ago before i knew much. Those are tricky. you can place a FWBR across them and get energy from them no problem. The problem is getting the right awg and length so they do not steal any of the energy going to your charge battery.
When I tried it, that was way before I ever made a cap pulser, I think that might help as well. Rectify to a cap then pulse to another battery.
I'm just guessing though. It would be nice if John Bedini expanded on what it is we should be looking for and what we need to think about while balancing those.
Let us know what you run into, post here or create a thread...
Kind Regards,
Patrick
Originally posted by Joster View PostComment
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Doh! Too late ;-)Hi Bob,
before you abandon ship, give the extra trigger wire a shot w/ the 1uF and a branch potentiometer. There is more balancing to be done w/ the mod than at first glance.
I look forward to your microcontroller work. Especially want to see how you accomplished that dump boost thing.
Kind Regards,
Patrick
It's nothing against CPD, hell I have used it before and had great results. If you remember a long time ago I had made a spin off based on your work where I was using photo-resistors and led's to create a frequency controller for the trigger? Well what I am doing with the MC is similar to that but FAR better than the previous attempt.
It can be frustrating to have others try and replicate something we work on especially when they have an issue. I have had people tell me that the mosfet board I use doesn't work and just can't switch fast enough, Lol I wanted to tear my hair out but in the end we all run into our own issues that may hold us back. I can switch that board down too 2 thousandths of a second and pass 45v on a 99k capacitor using it as a dumper. To anyone reading I highly recommend you DO play with Patrick's CPD because I did for a long time on smaller systems and it will help you understand some things which you might otherwise miss and if tuned properly it will improve performance. Many thanks Patrick for your help with this and for all the contributions you make to the group.Comment
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I'm writing this in general to anyone who's reading, that's you - HI!
While I did not get to hear bob's coils w/ the 1uf cap on. I've been doing some more long runs on the wheel so I had some time to investigate some other situations that might cause your system to hit the point of no return too soon.
a couple of things,
Burnt POT across the cap - I happened along this one as I was trying out different sized POT's. Since the pot was the only thing I changed, it was easy to pinpoint. Put the pot on your ohms meter and sweep it making sure there are no little hops.
This software and a mic was as useful as a scope in finding the burnt spot. It's very easy to burn these pots if you're passing too much current.
make sure and have a good branch resistor - see below...
http://www.sillanumsoft.org/
The second thing I found was if your Branch resistor is too small, both in watts and size it's pretty easy to skip a whole range of pulse frequencies. I have a 2 watt 5k POT for this 4filer and it works very nicely.
Third and most obvious for most - loose wires, bad solder, BREADBOARD. I like my bread boards, but they have too much metal too close and they create too much capacitance between rows for these ckts. Many times this will interfere and cause strange things to happen - some good most badddddd.
Another very cool thing to try is get it working w/ 1 transistor, then add one power winding on at a time, monitor your batteries, the pulses and the temp on your transistors.
Cool Stuff,
Patrick AComment
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