New Medium Sized Machine

[James McDonald]

Just an update..

I have tried a reed switch and it presents it's own set of challenges. It will work but if you go to strong it will latch. I tried adjusting the timing and that could help but the only way to get the reed happy is to run the machine in such a way that it's not really charging very well. What I am really finding is that without the arcing you will not get anywhere near the same performance as you can get with transistors. The arcing wears down whatever mechanical switch you are using and there seems to be no way around it. I would actually favor the first way I tried with the rods over the reed simply because I can run hard as I like and get some good charging at the cost of burning rods but the reed will latch and possibly burn up your coils or at a minimum run your primary down in a flash. Given the choice I would rather have dependable switching that I have to replace rods on.

I tried a lot of variations like biasing the reed input with resistance thinking the arc may prefer to run back down to the charge pos if it was an easier path but that didn't work out too well. I even tried a traditional flyback diode and of course that suppressed the arc greatly but then we are not picking off the spike. I wish I could figure out how to make the spike run down to the charge pos but it prefers to arc instead. This is making me appreciate Mr. Bedini's transistor setup even more than ever. I imagine he may have done similar testing with mechanical switching and knows the best way to avoid it is to use the transistor. I will say that with very low power setups the reed or the rod would probably work very well, like the 3d models he is working on lately but I envisioned this machine to be handling banks of batteries. I even tried placing a resistor across the switch point to give it a soft off similar to a transistor but nope, it still wanted to eat itself for lunch.

Oh well guys this is why I experiment, you don't know until you try. In a pinch you absolutely can use a mechanical switch and you will harvest the spike but at a cost.

Not sure if I am going to give up on this idea or keep pushing on. In the back of my mind I always knew if the mechanical switching wasn't going to work out I could run this thing with a circuit board.

Hi Bob --

The below reed switch will switch up to 10,000 volts at 3 Amps. The break down voltage is 15,000 volts and
will carry 5 Amps maximum once switched on. Looks like Digi-Key and Mouser want you to buy a minimum of 25
pieces for $650.00. The one place below will sell one for a little over $28.00 dollars. Maybe it may handle the arc since
it can switch 10,000 volts. If you contact the company directly maybe they may sample you one for the shipping
costs.

https://standexelectronics.com/produ...reed-switch-3/

https://standexelectronics.com/resou...s-reed-switch/

http://www.onlinecomponents.com/mede...tml?p=11731933


James McDonald

[James_Somewhere_In_Idaho]

Hi James McDonald

Nice, thank you for posting!

[BobZilla]

Hi James M,, thanks for the link. I have noticed that 3A seems to be the limit for reeds. Those longer ones with the big tongs do seem to be the best for this type of work. I have pretty much decided that switching the coils directly with the reed is asking too much of it.

I have reached a point with this experiment that it's drifting now away from odds and ends and back into specialized parts. Oh well at least we did see some primitive switching and what that looks like.

I am currently running a solid state relay and a reed. The reed is switching the relay which switches the coils. In the attached video I am using some of my crystal cells to supply the relay, purely for show of course ;-)

The relay requires 4-8v @13.5ma. It is really an opto-coupled FET but in a single package sold as a relay. The coils are in series at about 6.5 Ohm 18awg. This is very low power but It is working nicely. If I roll up 3 more coils and put those in series then parallel with the original 3 I will gain some power. Eventually this machine is supposed to have 12 coils so this is all just initial testing. I wish I still had them parallel but I had changed that to try and ease the arcing when I was switching directly on the reed.

Link:
http://1drv.ms/1SGknMy

[BobZilla]

Here is another video with comments about how this is running and going through a few different sources for the relay.

Link:
http://1drv.ms/1Iyc8lj

[Branch Gordon]

Great vid man. I like that you are using the crystal batteries for something.

Here is another video with comments about how this is running and going through a few different sources for the relay.

Link:
http://1drv.ms/1Iyc8lj

[James_Somewhere_In_Idaho]

Hi Bob

Wow! That's awesome! I like the new reed switch/relay combination, with separate crystal batteries! It looks to me, that the "biggest bang for your buck", so-to-speak, is the two crystal batteries (less current, close to the same output)...maybe I was not seeing that correctly, but that is how it appeared to me. I wonder how it will run with more coils on that arrangement??? Great work!

[BobZilla]

Thanks guys. I like the new arrangement alot but obviously the relay is a special part which is getting away from the original intent for this setup. I may try using an auto relay instead of the fancy one, at least those can be found everywhere.

The other way to drive the relay might be to just put a genny coil to collect some induction and feed it back to the relay.

James it is really either way but the crystal cells are a neat option. Basically they put out less current at less voltage which in turn switches the power side of the relay a little lighter. Think of it like a pot on a trigger of a normal setup, the crystals run it as if you applied more resistance and the battery runs as if you used less on the trigger.

I appriciate you guys following along and commenting. I wish I could show every little thing I try but too many videos gets old. I am currently running it on a 24v input and it is doing very well. I have to do that to overcome the resistance of those coils. I could either put them back in parallel or roll some more and put those in their own series and then parllel that string with the first, no matter how it is done I would have to lower my coil resistance a bit to start seeing charging comparable to a normal machine on 12v.

More to come, thanks again...

[BobZilla]

Today I am sharing some charts and a video of a run I did on a garden battery.

The coils are in parallel, same coils as before because I have not made the new ones yet.

The batteries are both garden variety. There are more details in the video.

Primary:


Charge:



Video:
http://1drv.ms/1U5z7pe

[BobZilla]

I ran an automotive coil in place of the SSR in the next video. This is more in line with the all mechanical system that I was shooting for in the beginning. This is only temporary however because I have decided to build this out with some larger SSR's and start adding coils. I wanted to share this video before I start going that direction with the machine. I have some extra parts so I may make two versions of this machine, one with SSR and one as I started out but for now I am experimenting on this one.

Link:
http://1drv.ms/1SBsig7

[BobZilla]

I have a large SSR installed on the machine now and did a 24v run front and back. On the back it is two garden batteries and on the front some of my large AGM's.

The coils are still the same as the last few video's, still have not had time to make anymore yet.

The chart does not have much lead time but if you look close you can see that these garden batteries were really drained so this is a full run.



Here is the primary on the same run but these are much larger batteries than the back.



And here is a short video of the run:
http://1drv.ms/1OYncLi

[BobZilla]

Hello group,

It has been awhile since I have updated on this machines progress so I thought I would drop some info.

I tested with the solid state relay for a few months and I have mixed opinion of it. On the surface it did seem to perform very well. I could have been happy with it and not thought twice but I did start to notice at different RPM my results would swing wildly. It seemed the slower runs were doing much better than faster. The more I thought about it it seemed to me that it is not really the RPM which is causing the variance so much as it is the switching of the device. I tried really large banks on the front to ensure it was not just Peukert's law and it was not. These things switch via an internal LED which is one of the things I really liked about it, opto coupled switching built right in. However when you get to a certain frequency I believe you are not getting a good hard off, it gets fluffy. To make matters worse there is not really a way to install a pull down because it is all internal so once that capacity is built up it has to run out on it's own. So I could be wrong on this but I wanted to inform the group that I have noticed this problem when using SSR's so be aware of it if you decide to try them.

I have installed three FET's in parallel instead and a 10k OHM pull down resistor from the gate to the drain. This seems to provide really clean switching but the experiment continues.

[John_Koorn]

Hi Bob, good report. Keep tryin'

John K.

[BobZilla]

Thanks John.

So I have a run to show here. This was two garden batteries on the back and a 20AH LifePO4 battery on the front. The run is done in gen mode.

The first chart shows both the front and the back with an overlay view and the second chart is the same run but with a split view. The white line at the begining and end is the cursor for the software so I placed it at the beginning on one chart and the end on the other so that it displays the voltages start/finish.





And here is a video showing the machine in operation:
Clack 9 video

[James McDonald]

Thanks John.

So I have a run to show here. This was two garden batteries on the back and a 20AH LifePO4 battery on the front. The run is done in gen mode.

The first chart shows both the front and the back with an overlay view and the second chart is the same run but with a split view. The white line at the begining and end is the cursor for the software so I placed it at the beginning on one chart and the end on the other so that it displays the voltages start/finish.





And here is a video showing the machine in operation:
Clack 9 video

Hi BobZilla --

Thanks for sharing your very nice time elapsed video showing a very nice run of the new machine using the 20 AH LifePO4 battery on the
front charging two Lead Acid batteries in parallel. I have one question on the generator mode. Does the generator mode charge go through a Cap
Dump Bank before charging the LifePO4 battery?

-- James

[BobZilla]

Hi James,
Not in this example, this was without any cap dump. By the way it was the garden batteries that received the charge and the LIFEPO4 was the primary.

You can hook up a cap dump in this mode if you want too but this was without one. When Mr. Bedini first showed this mode he showed "Mode1" which is the typical way most of us run, then there is this mode so mode2 or I call it gen mode where it is still just a front and a back, and then mode3 was mode2 but with a cap dump system on the output. You can also feed mode1 into a cap dump.

Thanks for your interest

*EDIT*
I looked at your question again and perhaps your asking how was the LifePO4 charged in the first place, with a cap dump? If that is what you meant then the answer is still no cap dump. The primary was charged in the same way but using another lifePO4 battery that I have as the primary. I then took the charged lifePO4 and put it on the front to charge the garden batteries. Generally speaking it is not good to pulse charge the lifePO4 batteries, Tom has said that Mr. Bedini ran a bunch of tests and told him first hand that it will damage them. I do not know if over a long term the gen mode will damage them but I tend to think it will not because it is a current charge and more importantly it does not throw really high voltages at them. With this chemistry high voltage is damaging to the cathode, that is why they always recommend those bleeder boards that you see on mine.