New Medium Sized Machine

[BobZilla]

Today I am posting a video showing the machines current configuration. I did a run on a typical garden battery. As I mentioned previously I am trying to bring this machine back to it's original goal of having no modern transistors or silicon chips. I elaborated on this earlier on in the thread but basically it is a challenge to myself to see if I can make a charger with simple parts. Who know if someday a sun flare or an attack of some sort might fry all of the electronics, I want to be prepared if need be and this is how I gain knowledge. It is also quite interesting to learn different ways of harvesting.

Anyway here is a chart from the run:


And the video:
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmzmftzD-V0mhwWxwJzj8e9EL3x9

[min2oly]

Today I am posting a video showing the machines current configuration. I did a run on a typical garden battery. As I mentioned previously I am trying to bring this machine back to it's original goal of having no modern transistors or silicon chips. I elaborated on this earlier on in the thread but basically it is a challenge to myself to see if I can make a charger with simple parts. Who know if someday a sun flare or an attack of some sort might fry all of the electronics, I want to be prepared if need be and this is how I gain knowledge. It is also quite interesting to learn different ways of harvesting.

Anyway here is a chart from the run:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5728[/ATTACH]

And the video:
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmzmftzD-V0mhwWxwJzj8e9EL3x9

Hi Bob,
Nice work on this!
I'm curious where you have your timing on this and how you came to it...
That is, in relation to the magnet, where does the coil "turn on" get energized?
and where does it turn off?

I can't remember, have you shown us a scope shot of this one? My mechanically switched builds always scope different than the silicon switched ones :-)
Thanks,
Patrick

[BobZilla]

Hi Bob,
Nice work on this!
I'm curious where you have your timing on this and how you came to it...
That is, in relation to the magnet, where does the coil "turn on" get energized?
and where does it turn off?

I can't remember, have you shown us a scope shot of this one? My mechanically switched builds always scope different than the silicon switched ones :-)
Thanks,
Patrick
[ATTACH=CONFIG]5729[/ATTACH]

Hi Patrick,
I have been changing some stuff around today on the machine and will probably make another video to show, I have it running a lot better now than it was. I want to answer your question in the context of that last run though.

The polarity of the coils is setup in repulsion. I had the time wheel set so that after TDC the reed would close and energize the coils, so magnet approaches core, goes past the core and then the reed switches and the coil pushes the wheel away. Maybe about 10-15 degrees past TDC. I will say though that I don't think the actual magnet is the only thing involved here. You know what I mean I'm sure with the imaginary south and all.

Anyway I will try to make another video tomorrow and I will show more details.


*edit*
Oh I forgot to mention I do not have a scope.

[BobZilla]

Hello group,
A few posts back I shared a paper on metal rectifiers. I got my hands on some selenium rectifiers and am testing them in place of diodes right now ;-)

Here are a few shots of the rectifiers. I am showing six single plate rectifiers which I think would be rated around 20v and low current, these have been installed on my machine. Also are some examples of how full wave bridges were constructed with four plates. I think these were probably 35vAC.

[Faraday88]

Hello group,
A few posts back I shared a paper on metal rectifiers. I got my hands on some selenium rectifiers and am testing them in place of diodes right now ;-)

Here are a few shots of the rectifiers. I am showing six single plate rectifiers which I think would be rated around 20v and low current, these have been installed on my machine. Also are some examples of how full wave bridges were constructed with four plates. I think these were probably 35vAC.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5734[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5735[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]5736[/ATTACH]

Selenium Rectifiers are High-Voltage Rectifiers typically used in Cockroft -Walton Voltage Multiplier circuits..
Rgds,
Faraday88.

[BobZilla]

Hello group,
Today I am posting a run I did on a garden battery with the new setup using the selenium rectifiers.

Here is the chart from the run:



And a video of it in progress:
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmzmftzD-V0mhwaVqG3xq7tx6ksH

[BobZilla]

I rewired the machine to put all of the components down on the deck. It's better to bus the relays close and even instead of how I had it. I also took the mode one / common ground switch out and made it common ground all the time. The big diode is removed. the only diode on this thing now is the small one I have looped back for the reed switch on the trigger circuit.

[Brian McNece]

Hi RS,
I know that you know what your talking about and I appreciate your insight and respect your knowledge, but I also know what I have been doing for quite some time. Let me explain why what you said does not apply at least to how I do it with SSR.

The diode that I take the spike from ( the one that normally would be coming off the collector on a MJL) is at the junction of the bottom of the coil going into the relay. Pretty much the same as it would be on a normal MJL setup. So because of this the coil collapse and the spike are not going through the relay anyway. When the relay opens you basically have the primary pos fed through the coils with a diode at the end before the switch, the spike jumps out that diode to the charge battery when the switch opens. Hopefully you see what I mean. In other words the switching is after the spike diode on the way to the primary negative. I would shoot a video to explain this but I actually have that machine torn apart at teh moment. I do have this other video that was showing something different but you can see how it is setup.

I am with you on the MJL's going negative for sure, I remember Mr. Bedini talking about that so no dispute there at all. There is really no dispute about anything other than the way I lay out the circuit an internal diode on the SSR would not matter anyway because once it opens I am not using anything on the other side anyway, the coil and the ooutput diode are on the input side. Belive me I am not one of these jokers who does not understand the spike and I am not charging with current and calling it a Bedini circuit, I know how to harvest properly.

Here is that other video just so you can see how it's wired. I'm only talking about the first few min, after that the video was about the a genny coil.
https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmzmftzD-V0mhnTSgd3040LGH3aW

Bob
I am intrigued with the video about your machine running with the ssr, i got an ssr to try with my new machine i am working on. Any advice? Or things to look out for? Thanks for sharing the videos.

[BobZilla]

Hi Brian,
I don't have any special advice really. I'm sure you saw the explanation of how to wire it but if your not clear or have any questions feel free to ask. Do you know the rating on the SSR you are using, mine was 40A but that is way overkill. I have run as far down as a 5A but because of the pulsing nature of the circuit I would not go too low, basically at least double of whatever your machine runs at or more.

Will you be using a separate timing wheel like I did? If not just play around with the timing because it's a little different than the usual way but I'm sure you can get it no problem. One thing I highly recommend is that you use a separate battery for driving the SSR trigger side. It wil not use much juice at all so you can use something like a 9v or a few AA or whatever you have but I do recommend something separate from the main power.

Anyway I'm sure you will be fine, let me know how it turns out.

*Edit*
I was going to add here that you can sometimes use a regular trigger coil to activate the SSR but it really depends on the machine. I prefer to have a separate timing wheel and a small battery as I showed but I have run it by connecting a normal trigger wire. If you can get enough voltage for the SSR trigger side from induction then it will fire that way. If I were you I would just try it how I did it and then perhaps try a normal trigger later on if you like but I wanted to mention that I have done both.

[Brian McNece]

Bob
Thanks for your response and willingness to help, my ssr is rated at 25 amp 0-200 vdc. I am planning to wire it up just like yours initially, after i have it working properly there are a few things i would like to try with it. I am planning on a timing wheel with reed switches. (One of the things i want to eventually try is the dual reed switches like Patrick had shown a little while back.)

Hi Brian,
I don't have any special advice really. I'm sure you saw the explanation of how to wire it but if your not clear or have any questions feel free to ask. Do you know the rating on the SSR you are using, mine was 40A but that is way overkill. I have run as far down as a 5A but because of the pulsing nature of the circuit I would not go too low, basically at least double of whatever your machine runs at or more.

Will you be using a separate timing wheel like I did? If not just play around with the timing because it's a little different than the usual way but I'm sure you can get it no problem. One thing I highly recommend is that you use a separate battery for driving the SSR trigger side. It wil not use much juice at all so you can use something like a 9v or a few AA or whatever you have but I do recommend something separate from the main power.

Anyway I'm sure you will be fine, let me know how it turns out.

*Edit*
I was going to add here that you can sometimes use a regular trigger coil to activate the SSR but it really depends on the machine. I prefer to have a separate timing wheel and a small battery as I showed but I have run it by connecting a normal trigger wire. If you can get enough voltage for the SSR trigger side from induction then it will fire that way. If I were you I would just try it how I did it and then perhaps try a normal trigger later on if you like but I wanted to mention that I have done both.

[BobZilla]

Bob
Thanks for your response and willingness to help, my ssr is rated at 25 amp 0-200 vdc. I am planning to wire it up just like yours initially, after i have it working properly there are a few things i would like to try with it. I am planning on a timing wheel with reed switches. (One of the things i want to eventually try is the dual reed switches like Patrick had shown a little while back.)

Brian it sounds like your going to be fine to me. I can vouch for the way I was showing so yea starting with just replicating that is probably a good idea and then experiment more from there. I'm rooting for your success.Once you get it running I may have more advice but I don't want to over complicate things before we even see how it goes. One small suggestion would be that play with the reed and get it to where it us just barley into the field of your timing magnet. It will switch faster and cleaner if you don't over saturate it. Also don't try to run too fast or too slow at first but just a nice middle range to make sure everything is happy. Those reeds can sometimes just break off or stick. It's less likely in this application because the SSR trigger is so low current.

For the rest of the group I have a really short video here of machine running. I'm not talking through it or explaining anything at all, I was just admiring the thing as a machine. This thing reminds me of an old time kind of device with all of the clacking and arcing. Any builders out there can appreciate the pride of just watching your machine do it's thing ;-)

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmzmftzD-V0mhwgeVXMJdqe_2xwT

[BobZilla]

Hello friends,
I am back again with yet another iteration of this machine. I have swapped out the all mechanical switching for some SSR's. This is different from the other SSR in that this time each power winding has it's own SSR, basically it is very similar to how we would do it with transistors.

I have also installed a MC to limit the running duty cycle to 50%. I am trying to find a gain in running a genny coil on the back of the machine which is producing 100% of the time while the front of the machine is only drawing half of the time. There is a video below to better understand what I am talking about.

This was just a rough test run but I wanted to share with the group. Improvements can be made quite easily, as I say in the video for example I am using 10AH batteries in this run and the draw is high for such a small battery, probably pushing c10 or more rates here on this one. Anyway this was just for fun and not to be taken too seriously but hopefully you can see the potential in what I am showing.

Here is a pic of the machine now:


And the chart from this run. What you are seeing here is that I was swapping the back to front, then front to back and then again and so on.





And here is a video of this run. It is quite long but if your into these kind of things you might enjoy a little hang out session with me on this run.

https://1drv.ms/v/s!AmzmftzD-V0miF0wz17HLEA4Xrgy

[Michael Luton]

The 50% rest time is very interesting. I hope you keep us informed with the progress on that. The coil shorting has been on my list of things to get around to, but after your demonstration in the video it just went to the top of that list. Thanx

[BobZilla]

The 50% rest time is very interesting. I hope you keep us informed with the progress on that. The coil shorting has been on my list of things to get around to, but after your demonstration in the video it just went to the top of that list. Thanx

Hi Michael,
Thanks for checking it out. Yes you should try out the coil short, it's so easy to add on to any system. I have been playing a bit more with the setup and I may shoot another video, not so long as that last one now that I have shown what it's all about.

A few things to note from observations so far..

A 50% duty on the front may not be the right split, I mean it works ok but I have noticed that if running steady vs the 50% that each time the on time kicks in it causes a bit more draw than if it was running steady because of the wheel loosing momentum. A solution could be to change the percentage to like 60/40 or 80/20, or still do 50% but change the duration to a shorter on/off, or more mass on the wheel. The concept is sound but tweaking it could improve it a bit.

With the genny coil short on the back you cannot expect much current at all, at least not with one coil like I have at the moment. I hooked various batteries to it directly and was able to charge small stuff like 9v and a few AAA but as you go larger it is just not enough current to move them. The voltage is there but the current is not. It's kind of the same as when you put too large of a battery on the back of an SSG, it wants to charge but only to so far and not reach the full potential.

After playing with the raw signal straight to a battery for awhile I made a tiny cap dumper for it to go through. With this arrangement you can charge larger batteries than was possible without it. The little bursts of current from the cap help push the battery up. It is still not very powerful but more capable than without the dumper, but as I keep saying it is a working concept that needs tweaking. Really it needs more coils to do anything of size.

[Michael Luton]

For your percent duty cycle on the front end, would a flywheel help. To clarify I know that is not easy to do. I built a heavy rotor (2 inch thick plywood) and it was extremely hard to tune, mainly due to the time delay required between adjustments. Once it was ironed out it ran exceptionally well and actually my best run was on that machine. It was retired due to the timing issues, but I might have to drag it back out and play with it again.

Thanks for the performance report as well for that is what is important to me. I do not care so much about single items such as fastest, biggest spike, etc. unless it also means a performance gain in the ability to do work.

wish you well on your ongoing refinements and experiments.

Michael