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Scott's Replication of John Bedini's Simplified School Girl Radiant Energizer
— It Worked The First Time!! —
I had been building the stand and wheel, and had been collecting the rest of the parts when my kids told me they were coming over for Father's Day on Sunday. So, since I have Fridays off, I decided to go for it and put the whole thing together so I could show it to them!
I bought the last parts I needed (batteries and conventional charger) and started to assemble the circuit. I figured I had Friday, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning to try to get it working...
I started at 1:00pm on Friday, and four hours later I was done! I quadruple checked the circuitry and couldn't think of anything else to do so I hooked up the batteries (load first!),
and cranked the wheel over... AND IT RAN!!!
It ran for 7 hours until I shut it off to go to bed! Not bad for a first attempt!
I knew immediately that it was working correctly because the transistor runs cool to the touch.
I could be wrong, but sometimes it feels cooler than ambiant.
So since then I have been conditioning the charge battery. I tuned the SSG by ear, and it wasn't until a week later that I hooked up an ammeter to it and ran the variable resistor through it's full range, and ended right back exactly where I had tuned it by ear. By the way, the variable resistor is tuned so low the grain-of-wheat bulb does not light at all. Is it still working to smooth the trigger circuit?
It is drawing approximately 170-180 miliamps at 165 RPM. That's not bad, but I'd like to get the amps down and the RPM up. Any suggestions?
— Technical Specifications —
Bicycle Wheel: 22.5" Dia. aluminum rim, stainless spokes, steel bearings (new, lubed w/ Triflow & adjusted loose), balanced.
Free spin time: 15-16 minutes.
Magnets: (24) 1 7/8" x 7/8" x 3/8" Ceramic 8, very evenly spaced, 3" on-center, glued on w/ Liquid Nails,
taped w/ strapping tape (covering entire width (1 7/8") of magnets for lower air resistance).
Stand: Fir, 2' x 2' base, doweled & glued, axle height: 16", steel brackets.
Coil pedestal height adjustable and tiltable (approx. 5 degrees), brass screws.
Coil: Bifiler, 130' of #23 AWG & #26 AWG magnet wire, litzed and wound counter-clockwise.
Spool: (Not to spec.) 2 1/4" high x 1" ID.
Core: (Not to spec.) 4 1/4" long x 1" Dia. Almost the full pound of R45 welding rod (1/16" dia.).
Almost 2 bottles (1.8 fl. oz. ea.) of Superglue poured in.
Circuit Components:
(1) MJL21194-G Transistor
(1) 100 Ohm, 1/2 watt resistor (5%)
(1) 1K Ohm potentiometer
(1) 1N4007 diode
(1) 1N4001 diode
(1) NE-2 neon bulb
(1) grain of wheat bulb
Batteries: (2) 12VDC, 7AH, Power Sonic (brand), new, w/ lugs.
Wires: Battery leads: #10 AWG w/ soldered female lug connectors
Others: 12/14 AWG
Mount: 1/4" plexiglass
— Comments, Notes, Questions —
Magnets are very evenly spaced (took me 4 times to get it right)!
Wheel bearing races polished w/ Simichrome (brand) polish. I couldn't polish the balls because they are in a steel cage. Interestingly enough, because of the cage, there are only 6 balls.
Coil, Spool and Core are out of spec. The spool (and therefore the coil) are 1" short. And the spool (and therefore the core) is 1/4" too large in diameter. I didn't know what to do about the core length so I made it to spec (4 1/2" long). I figured it would be easier to cut it shorter, rather than cut it to make it longer... Also I thought it would make the North pole of the coil further away (is this better?).
Also, I read in Gerry Vassilatos' excellent book, "The Secrets of Cold War Technology", where he said, that Tesla said, that his best Transformers were those where the coil and the core had the same mass. So... should I calculate the mass of the wire and the mass of the core material to see how they compare?
Cogging: The wheel coggs pretty well. Which is better, more or less?
I replaced the screws on my bench top with stainless steel.
Is
— It Worked The First Time!! —
I had been building the stand and wheel, and had been collecting the rest of the parts when my kids told me they were coming over for Father's Day on Sunday. So, since I have Fridays off, I decided to go for it and put the whole thing together so I could show it to them!
I bought the last parts I needed (batteries and conventional charger) and started to assemble the circuit. I figured I had Friday, Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning to try to get it working...
I started at 1:00pm on Friday, and four hours later I was done! I quadruple checked the circuitry and couldn't think of anything else to do so I hooked up the batteries (load first!),
and cranked the wheel over... AND IT RAN!!!
It ran for 7 hours until I shut it off to go to bed! Not bad for a first attempt!
I knew immediately that it was working correctly because the transistor runs cool to the touch.
I could be wrong, but sometimes it feels cooler than ambiant.
So since then I have been conditioning the charge battery. I tuned the SSG by ear, and it wasn't until a week later that I hooked up an ammeter to it and ran the variable resistor through it's full range, and ended right back exactly where I had tuned it by ear. By the way, the variable resistor is tuned so low the grain-of-wheat bulb does not light at all. Is it still working to smooth the trigger circuit?
It is drawing approximately 170-180 miliamps at 165 RPM. That's not bad, but I'd like to get the amps down and the RPM up. Any suggestions?
— Technical Specifications —
Bicycle Wheel: 22.5" Dia. aluminum rim, stainless spokes, steel bearings (new, lubed w/ Triflow & adjusted loose), balanced.
Free spin time: 15-16 minutes.
Magnets: (24) 1 7/8" x 7/8" x 3/8" Ceramic 8, very evenly spaced, 3" on-center, glued on w/ Liquid Nails,
taped w/ strapping tape (covering entire width (1 7/8") of magnets for lower air resistance).
Stand: Fir, 2' x 2' base, doweled & glued, axle height: 16", steel brackets.
Coil pedestal height adjustable and tiltable (approx. 5 degrees), brass screws.
Coil: Bifiler, 130' of #23 AWG & #26 AWG magnet wire, litzed and wound counter-clockwise.
Spool: (Not to spec.) 2 1/4" high x 1" ID.
Core: (Not to spec.) 4 1/4" long x 1" Dia. Almost the full pound of R45 welding rod (1/16" dia.).
Almost 2 bottles (1.8 fl. oz. ea.) of Superglue poured in.
Circuit Components:
(1) MJL21194-G Transistor
(1) 100 Ohm, 1/2 watt resistor (5%)
(1) 1K Ohm potentiometer
(1) 1N4007 diode
(1) 1N4001 diode
(1) NE-2 neon bulb
(1) grain of wheat bulb
Batteries: (2) 12VDC, 7AH, Power Sonic (brand), new, w/ lugs.
Wires: Battery leads: #10 AWG w/ soldered female lug connectors
Others: 12/14 AWG
Mount: 1/4" plexiglass
— Comments, Notes, Questions —
Magnets are very evenly spaced (took me 4 times to get it right)!
Wheel bearing races polished w/ Simichrome (brand) polish. I couldn't polish the balls because they are in a steel cage. Interestingly enough, because of the cage, there are only 6 balls.
Coil, Spool and Core are out of spec. The spool (and therefore the coil) are 1" short. And the spool (and therefore the core) is 1/4" too large in diameter. I didn't know what to do about the core length so I made it to spec (4 1/2" long). I figured it would be easier to cut it shorter, rather than cut it to make it longer... Also I thought it would make the North pole of the coil further away (is this better?).
Also, I read in Gerry Vassilatos' excellent book, "The Secrets of Cold War Technology", where he said, that Tesla said, that his best Transformers were those where the coil and the core had the same mass. So... should I calculate the mass of the wire and the mass of the core material to see how they compare?
Cogging: The wheel coggs pretty well. Which is better, more or less?
I replaced the screws on my bench top with stainless steel.
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