Tuning help for best charging - SSG

[Jet-A]

Hello,

I started on my SSG kit about a year and a half ago. I got the pre wound coil and circuit board from R-charge. I built SSG following the instructions to the letter and bought 2 new 12v 7ah batteries for testing.

The SSG runs just fine but I'm having trouble with tuning and finding the sweet spot. My wheel has 18 magnets and all the grease was cleaned out of the bicycle bearings and I've been using LPS #2 as a lubricant in the bearings. I use it because I have a couple of cans and even though it is a relatively thin oil, it does still stick in the bearings, especially important because it runs for days on end. Its not a solvent like WD-40 is. This would be my only deviation from the plans instead of the oil that Rick recommended.

My trouble is getting the charging battery up to charge termination voltage. I have reached 14.5 volts a few times, but this has been after about 4 days of the SSG running, which is too long according to posts I've read. I have followed the tuning instructions and recorded amp draw vs RPM at the different settings of the variable resistor. My charging curve is very flat with no well defined drops on resistance with a rise in RPM. There are some very gentle peaks and valleys, but again, nothing well defined. Even when in an apparent "sweet spot" the charging takes 4 days to reach 14.5v.

My SSG is still on my workbench as I want to get this working and learn the technology. Its been maybe 6 months since I've run it and I'm afraid the batteries may have become sulfated by being almost 2 years old. I realize I may need to begin again with new batteries.


Anyone have some ideas on what I can do?

I'm very happy to see John B on here participating in the newbie forum!

Thanks,
Alex

[MrRonsen]

i am at the same point.. batteries need long time to get up to 14.xxV
do we have to recharge primary again and again until charging the secondary reaches 14.50V?
or do we have to charge the secondary till during one hour no significant increase occurs...and then discharge..
how to handle?

i know that is the process of conditioning the charging battery..
but how, that is not descibed in the manual...

by the way, the manual should be "rewritten".. added new, more contents.. add simple FAQ, questions like this here!

[Jet-A]

I had the same issue. I had to recharge my primary several times to get the secondary close to a full charge. Then I smartened up and took the deep cycle battery out of my RV trailer and used it as the primary. It will now run the SSG for a long, long time before needing to be recharged.

In my opinion one needs a bigger primary at first to get some good results with finding the sweet spot and charging the secondary. Then you can go back to using the normal battery for the primary. I have yet to reach that point.......

Alex

[RS_]

If your voltage peaks out before 14.5 and will not get there. stop the charge, and discharge it for a cupple of minuets with a real heavy load for that C20 size battery, then put it back on charge to see if that helps blast through the sulfate layers and get it to 14.5+ this will also show if you are putting a fluffy charge in the batterys or a good solid charge. because if the load makes the battery drop below 12.4 or so during that 2 minuits, the SSG is not tuned correctly....... you should be holding around 12.7V depending on the load used

sometimes when you have very conditioned battery's, They will never get to 14.5V and may only get to 13.90V or so, no mater how long you charge it..... so stopping as soon as it peaks out works in that case and will still have 4 hour standing V of 13.10-30V

[Jet-A]

RS,

thanks for the reply. I don't think my batteries are conditioned yet. I'm concerned that they may be sulfated to some degree because they haven't reached a full charge. If I leave them stand for a while(weeks to months) I do charge them with a conventional charger so they don't sit with a low charge. The conventional charger charges them right up to a normal full voltage.

After I disconnect the SSG and let the batteries rest and do the discharge all appears normal during the discharge - no surface charge.

Alex

[Carlos Galvis]

i recommend you get that video from peter lindeman called "battery secrets," it has great information in there... the batteries have a natural curve at which they charge, they begin charging fast and then when they reach around 12.3V they slow down, and on th 13V range the slow down even more, but then at 14V range they speed up again... every battery will have different knee points, but in general they all have the same curve, and John B has expressed many times, in order to charge with radiant spikes, you need to give it a long time, but the batteries will be healthier. also in the instructions say that in this basic model of the ssg you shouldn't expect to charge the secondary faster than the primary discharges, for this you'll probably need to go into the more advanced models. i haven't even been able to make unity with my basic SSG (COP 1.0), but every run it seems to get closer. right now im at 0.85 COP after starting on .54 COP... keep at it!

[Jet-A]

i recommend you get that video from peter lindeman called "battery secrets," it has great information in there... the batteries have a natural curve at which they charge, they begin charging fast and then when they reach around 12.3V they slow down, and on th 13V range the slow down even more, but then at 14V range they speed up again... every battery will have different knee points, but in general they all have the same curve, and John B has expressed many times, in order to charge with radiant spikes, you need to give it a long time, but the batteries will be healthier. also in the instructions say that in this basic model of the ssg you shouldn't expect to charge the secondary faster than the primary discharges, for this you'll probably need to go into the more advanced models. i haven't even been able to make unity with my basic SSG (COP 1.0), but every run it seems to get closer. right now im at 0.85 COP after starting on .54 COP... keep at it!

Carlos,

I based my information of slow charging on posts I've read and questions I've asked in the previous Yahoo Forum. In there read, by the moderators, a SSG tuned to the correct sweet spot should charge the battery in about 24 to maybe 36 hours on the long end. I'm at 4 days - 96 hours. In that time I would go through about 4 full charges of the primary before I used a bigger primary battery and made it one long run.

You're saying my charge time is normal? While I'm obviously not anywhere near an expert on this primarily because I can barely get one battery fully charged - I have read a lot on the forums looking for information to help me.

Please, I don't discount your advice, it can just be a bit tough when I sometimes get conflicting information to sort out what I need to do.

How many AH are your batteries?

Thanks for your help,
Alex

[Carlos Galvis]

alex, 96 hours is way too long for the simple SG, i am new at this so probably should't be giving you advise that might confuse you. i can only tell you about my own experience... my SSG charges the batteries in around 30 hours. the tuning spot varies in every machine, just find the point at which the ssg draws the less possible current at the highest RPM. make sure to use #8 ceramic magnets, no neos, no less that 2 magnet-sizes appart from each other. the coil should be fairly big, and Jonh B. has expressed many times that the wires of both batteries should be thick and as short as possible. check and re-check the circuit build, it took me 8 tries untill i got it right. hope this helps, cheers

carlos

[Forrest]

Hi guys,

I feel your pain as I too have been there. I just finished off my last set of 20 runs for a total of 50 runs on two machines with two identical batteries 5AH. I am here to tell you that still after 50+ runs on both batteries the 30+ hours is not out of the realm for real charging. Using a 7AH battery for charging is going to take some time. Go ahead and do the runs regardless of the time. The important thing is not to give up and let the batteries sit idle. So what if it takes 150 hours. The important thing is to do the runs and you will see a time when this excessive time will dramatically shorten. I have tried every concievable tuning method and then just bit the bullet and charged forward. If you need a monster suppy battery then do it......I ended up using three lawn mower batteries in parallel just to complete the runs. So do not feel there is some magical wand to make your batteries charge real fast. These machines are not capable of generating a monstrous amount of charging current. These are small demonstration machines just to get you to learn the technowlegy. If you want shorter charge times use smaller batteries.

Do the charges and keep close track of the current being drawn from the delivery battery and then keep track of the charge current going into the battery. Run the charts and when completed on one run look at the battery COP. If it is anywhere from roughly .75 to 1+ you are tuned very close. If it falls way short of this then you might not be tuned right or have a very highly sulfated battery. The important thing is not to give up. Keep charging!

Bud

[John_Bedini]

Battery Help for the Monopole

Monopole Help.
@All,
I did want to answer some of these questions. The basic Monopole will have some trouble charging big batteries. The bike wheel will charge the batteries as long as the wire requirements are correct. I do not see any pictures here. The coil must be scaled for the battery your charging. If you can not push the battery to between 14.8 and 15 volts then the circuit must be adjusted. Charging a good sized Garden battery should not be a problem.
For an Example if your using 23 Wire that is way to small to match the impedance of the battery. If you change that wire size to 19 you will have better luck, the trigger can stay the same. Start the machine at 470 ohms, and please make all the wire lengths as short as possible, you can not do this with clip leads, use good wire at least # 14 to the recovery battery. If you study the condition your working in you will find that the wires work like inductors and you can find the power across them. Radiant circuits hate spider webbing and long wires running all over the place, show me what your building so I can help. "Pictures Please"
John B

[MrRonsen]

i use solid wire diameter 1.37 mm ( measured without coating ) all over the place in my bicycle vanila ssg
AWG15 diam 1,449578mm
AWG16 diam 1,290828mm


should be big enough i guess..

[Jet-A]

John, thanks for the reply.

I attached some pics. The coil is the standard one from Rick I bought close to 2 years ago along with the circuit board. I think its the same one he sells now. I believe the coil wires are #23 and #26 with 900 turns. Working on this I have increased the charging ability from when I first put it together.

Free spin time is about 8 mins, #10 wire to charging battery, I have a 22" aluminum bicycle wheel with 18 magnets, also the magnets from Rick. The wheel has 36 spokes so 18 was a great way to take advantage of placing the magnets very other spoke.
7 Ah batteries, they were new when I started.
Charging for longer than 4 days the voltage only tops out at about 14.6 - 14.7 tops.

The SSG functionally works, just takes a long, long time to charge to 14.5v, and perhaps matching the coil to the battery as John says is an answer.

The "spider" of resistors is what I use once I've found the sweet spot to jumper the pot.

Thanks,
Alex

[Branch Gordon]

Jet-

I'll be interested to see what is holding you up. I am in the process of switching from the 3PM Kit (not much luck with it) to building the bicycle wheel monopole...and everything you described above is what I had planned on doing. Pretty much just following the instructions from the experiment doc exactly.

I'll probably just wind my coil from the start with #19 and #26 wire per JB's suggestion...unless there is some risk of overpowering small batteries (I have 5AH batteries).

Hopefully you can post again if you try a different coil and get better results.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]298[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]299[/ATTACH]

John, thanks for the reply.

I attached some pics. The coil is the standard one from Rick I bought close to 2 years ago along with the circuit board. I think its the same one he sells now. I believe the coil wires are #23 and #26 with 900 turns. Working on this I have increased the charging ability from when I first put it together.

Free spin time is about 8 mins, #10 wire to charging battery, I have a 22" aluminum bicycle wheel with 18 magnets, also the magnets from Rick. The wheel has 36 spokes so 18 was a great way to take advantage of placing the magnets very other spoke.
7 Ah batteries, they were new when I started.
Charging for longer than 4 days the voltage only tops out at about 14.6 - 14.7 tops.

The SSG functionally works, just takes a long, long time to charge to 14.5v, and perhaps matching the coil to the battery as John says is an answer.

The "spider" of resistors is what I use once I've found the sweet spot to jumper the pot.

Thanks,
Alex

[Forrest]

http://s1243.photobucket.com/albums/...n/4f0e5c43.jpg

http://s1243.photobucket.com/albums/...n/0a2b6127.jpg

Hi all,

Here is a picture of a coil that I wound some time ago just to see if it would work. I know..... I know.....long wires and more. The point is to look at the differnce in size of each coil. The little one is the standard spec of 850 turns just like the drawings per JB. The big one is 850 turns of the correct trigger wire and 850 turns of .042" dia aluminum power coil wire. I know it is not copper but I had it laying around and tried it. The core is 1.5" dia pvc tube with .23" dia. reinforcing wire very very rusty epoxied in. I know the core is the wrong dia. but it works really good. The was tested last night after JB had posted his above comment about using larger cores to charge bigger batteries. So I charge a 12AH battery with it. The specs went like this......360ma draw.....110ma charge.....@143 rpm. The charging was really fast!

[Jet-A]

Guys,

the thread - "Coil wire size, COP and tuning" has new info that I think would help me and probably everyone building the SSG.

Alex