I just realized in my last posting I was linking to a junk pirate clip collector.
Here are the most recent three Thane C. Heins clips on his real YouTube channel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQq1-J8SOtchttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eiu-dCe8bnAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AeWkNYjUNQI am going to make a few generic comments on the architecture of Thaine's setup. I couldn't find a diagram but I assume those following the developments are familiar with the latest configuration.
I am going to call the inner flux path the "Figure8" and the outer flux path the "OuterO." Lets assume that the Figure8 orientation is horizontal. Therefore the primary coil will be vertically oriented. This is how you see it in most of his clips.
To keep things simple we will just talk about flux flowing in one direction, even though the whole system is AC-based and the flux is bidirectional.
When he energizes the primary coil we know that the flux will circulate through the Figure8. Assume the flux flows bottom to top through the primary coil. Therefore flux circulates counter-clockwise in the left half of the Fgure8 and clockwise in the right half of the Figure8.
Assume the two secondary coils have the same number of turns and they have the identical value of load resistor connected to them.
The two secondary coils will also induce flux to flow through the OuterO. Here is where we run into a problem.
Let's look at the right half of the Figure8. On the right side the flux is flowing downwards. The right secondary coil gets current induced into it to drive the right load. This induced current creates flux in the opposite direction of the source flux. The source flux is flowing downwards, therefore the induced current creates flux that is flowing upwards. This induced-current-generated flux also induces flux in the OuterO that flows upwards.
Upwards flow in the right side OuterO corresponds to counter-clockwise flux flow.Exactly the opposite reaction happens on the left half of the Figure8:
Let's look at the left half of the Figure8. On the left side the flux is flowing downwards. The left secondary coil gets current induced into it to drive the left load. This induced current creates flux in the opposite direction of the source flux. The source flux is flowing downwards, therefore the induced current creates flux that is flowing upwards. This induced-current-generated flux also induces flux in the OuterO that flows upwards.
Upwards flow in the left side of OuterO corresponds to clockwise flux flow.So the OuterO is getting conflicting induced flux that cancels itself out. In other words, if the number of turns in the two secondary coils and the load resistors are perfectly balanced, then the OuterO does nothing because of the flux cancellation.
Therefore as a general statement, the OuterO flux ring is not serving any useful purpose. The setup would work just as well if you only had the Figure8 flux path with the three coils.
In the next posting I can propose a test to see if my analysis is correct or not. It's quite hard to visualize this stuff so the test is absolutely necessary.
MileHigh