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Author Topic: Don Smith's Briefcase Replication  (Read 54360 times)

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The build so far

Coil was constructed using 18AWG Tinned Copper wire, this was wound to the diameter on a tube, and then grommet strip was used to hold each turn in place and then Epoxy Glue was placed in the grommet strip channels to hold it all together.

Primary Coil

Wire Length 128.3 Cm
Inductance 3.912uH
Calculated Res Freq = 179.993kHz
Wire Diameter= 18AWG 1.02362mm
Number of turns 5
-----------------------------------
Secondary
My secondary coil has 20 turns and is 528.5 cm long including tails.
using a slightly bigger than 5 inch tube.
Tails=15cm
Coil wire length without Tails 513.5cm

Inductance = 16.03uH
Parallel Resistance = 21.8 Ohms
Series Resistance = 0.0473 Ohms
Impedance = 1.0062
Q = 21.36

Tested at 10khZ

Inductance per Turn
20   16.06uH
19   15.08uH
18   14.11uH
17   13.15uH
16   12.18uH
15   11.22uH
14   10.26uH
13    9.33uH
12    8.41uH
11    7.50uH
10    6.59uH
9    5.72uH
8    4.86uH
7    4.03uH
6    3.25uH
5    2.50uH
4    1.80uH
3    1.17uH
2    0.64uH
1    0.22uH
-----------------------------------

Primary Capacitors are 0.1 with 2 in Parallel rated for 4kv

Secondary Capacitors are 10 in series 470nF giving 39.8nF @ 6.3 kV working voltage.

I am using 2 high voltage diodes, one of which is a 3A 20kv.

The final smoothing capacitors  5 in total at the moment are in parallel 1uf Each @ 1700V, i will be putting 2 each of these in parallel and then two of these banks in series to give me 1uF @ 3.4kV

Spark gaps are on the way, i have ordered a whole bunch of different voltages.

Peter
   

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It's a thing of beauty Peter!  I can't wait to see what that thing can do!!!  Did I see a lightening arrester in the mix?
   

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Hi Stewart

Thanks for the comments.

The spark arrester is one of the duff ones i got from ebay and reads short circuit, i just placed it across the output caps to keep them at zero volts for now  ;D

Peter
   

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It looks better then the real thing  ;D
   

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Thanks ST   ;)

I sparked it up and The primary would not resonate i have attached a couple of FFT Shots.
I was using a 600v gdt in series with my HV psu and it was sparking ok.

It turns out the reason is that my Paper/Oil Metal Can Capacitors are the culprits , they measure 197nF on my cap meter and the metal can seems to be isolated from both terminals, but i cannot get them to resonate with the coil in parallel, back to square one, i now need a new 0.2 4kv cap for my primary
   

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Ok i made a new Primary Cap from 5 1uF 1500v Poly Prop caps in series to give 197nF

Here are some fft shots

The first 3 are taken with the scope probe laying on the bench near the coils, each had different a different spark setting, and one of them was using an air gap.

The final 2 were taken with my scope connected across my secondary coil with the 47nF, the cap should have been connected, but now i have time to look at these, i would not have expected to see such a broad spectrum of noise if my cap really was connected so i need to check this tomorrow maybe the wire came out or something.

Oh by the way the last two were taken with the primary coil being in different positions inside the secondary i was scoping across.
Anyone throw any light and whats happening from these FFT shots.

Cheers,
Peter



   

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Remember one thing Peter, Don was in it for $$$. On one of the tube vids I posted he was talking about some crazy amount of money!  We have pics, videos and data but I don't think Don gave us everything for a working device.  I think your caps are ok now you need to find the missing part/s that Don didn't show us.  How can you adjust/add to the caps to get them to resonate?  You are close...keep up the good work.
   

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Remember also that resonance is just a means to an end.  Tesla even said that you can often do better with a few turns of a secondary (transformer).

Take a look at what a happens to the space around a coil when it is resonating.
   

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Ok i have been sparking my Replication.

so far i can make my output Capacitors reach a grand voltage of about 250v DC, it's slow though, and i have to pull my primary out almost fully for this to happen.
Interestingly i can also get this to happen with no primary capacitor connected at all.

So going back to the signal generator and sweeping for max amplitude on my primary i get a frequency of 152.44Khz, but when i do this on my secondary coil with the 47nF i get max amplitude at 148.81kHz, so it looks to me as though my coils are not tuned right now.
It times like this i wish i had a decent vacuum capacitor to hand.

Tomorrow i will try a crock clip and see if i can find a place on my secondary where i get the same frequency as my primary coil setup.

Also Don said he used a neon to find the node's on his secondary, my neon lights all the way along my secondary coil

Peter
   

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I have few vacuum caps, or do you need a variable one?
   

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Hi Grumpy

Thank you for the offer, yeah i have been looking for a 1000pf variable Vacuum cap on ebay, but they are very expensive, but non variable will make my life hard to tune these.

I have not been getting good results so far, i am not so clever with this high voltage setup, fish out of water really.

The caps i am using on my primary are 5 x 1uf HV caps in series and for my secondary cap i am using 10 in series 470nF to give me my 47nF @ 6300v, i suspect this isn't good, maybe high series resistance is causing me problems.

Originally when i posted on OU that i was going to Replicate this device, i mentioned i was doing it because my pulsing a bifilar coil experiment on the other thread had collided with Some of Don's stuff, so now i will switch back to using this system for my original purpose.

The purpose is for me to start pulsing my primary with my 2 channel controller and start injecting the delayed pulses to study what effect this has with a movable primary and a tuned and untuned secondary, this means i will not need the expensive high voltage caps and can drop down to 500 volt caps instead.

Also the problem i have had is that when i am using 10kv to pulse my primary, i am left in the position of making sure my scope is not connected, this leaves me somewhat blind to what is happening, so with my original intention of pulsing the primary with fast nS pulses i will not have this and will be able to scope and see what the results are.

Also

If anyone is interested i am willing to make a few of the secondary coils to send out to people to experiment with, on the condition they document their experiments on OUR, guys let me know on here and i will get the gear to make another 2 or 3, i will have to leave the primary upto you guys.

Again thanks for the offer Grumpy but there's no need now ;)

Cheers,
Peter


   
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Hi peter, nice build, looking good!

Just an idea: your secondary is I think free running in front of the diodes, i.e. it has no direct LC relationship to your collection caps. One test you could maybe try is to put a much smaller collection cap after the diodes (Same C as primary C) and have that break down over a gap the same width as your primary exciter gap. then you can measure the gapfire frequencies to get a good handle on COP. It's good for tuning because you can just listen to the output gap as you tune differnt aspects. AS you well know, you can't hang equipment off these beasts which makes it frustrating to tweak.

For gaps I use tungsten welding rods cut and filed perfectly flat, then mount them in house wiring electrical blocks (brass terminals in PVC), gap them with car feeler guages etc for a variable cheap and hardy gap.

I am studying your spectrums and will comment after some time to think on them.

P.S.
I am going to wind a new primary to be an integer fraction of my secondary length and start playing here again, at the moment my wire lengths are arbitrary.
   

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Hi Chaps

Today i tried powering the primary with my Pulse controller, i didnt have a primary cap connected but did have my bank of caps on the secondary.
This was only a quick test, but i am getting power transfer, again the primary needs to be almost fully pulled out for energy transfer, as if it's the secondary with no caps thats picking up the power.
I am now wondering if it's because i am using a different diode on this side, it's a beefy 20kv @ 3A, on my tunned cap i was hardly measuring any amplitude even though my controller was switching at the resonant frequency of this tuned secondary, i am convinced my caps are no good, now i am using lower voltage i am going to order a 47nf cap and maybe an air variable cap.

I am amazed i am getting seondary cap bank gap firing, the gap i am using is a 230vdc gap, i am using the 5 off 1uF caps in parallel so i counted 10 gap fires in about 15 seconds so i need to think on this but i should be able to work out the energy dissipation based on this info i think.

The controller is sending a 40nS pulse @182 khz, the power supply is set @ 124.8volts @ 8mA The other power supply is feeding the logic in the controller and is not connected to the fet stages.

So by my reckoning if the psu current is reading correct which i think it's close i have an input power of 124.8 x 0.008 = 0.9984 watts

The gap is firing into a mains bulb 240vac 25 watt but there is no sign of it lighting.

Now all i need to do is work out what energy it takes my 5uF cap bank to charge to 230v every (15seconds/10 fires) 1.5 seconds.

Here's a quick non cometary video
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gqULwKVBwg[/youtube]

Peter
   

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Ok  i have crunched the numbers on the caps

I am using 5uf for my main cap bank and it reaches 230volts every 1.5 seconds and fires the gap.
For a cap of 5uF charged to 230 volts there is 0.13225 Joules of energy released at best every 1.5 seconds

My input power consumption is 124.8 x 0.008 = 0.9984 watts

This equates to 0.08815 watts of energy so it's no wonder my 25 watt bulb doesn't light :(

my cop is currently @ 0.088308

Peter
   
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nice one Peter! it would have been so cool if that 25W bulb fired up first try ;D

Maybe even 0.088W calc is a tiny bit high; I think the caps won't empty to zero on each fire, the gap probably quenches before 0v is reached, but it probably won't make much of a difference because of the Vsquared term.

I'll bet some other pulse width has better COP?

EDIT:
try grounding the positive lead of your output caps, (provided that the caps are not earthed at neg of course :o which I don't think they are in your rig), it's quite weird but in all my tinkerings with air trafo I find COP increases significantly when grounding the positive of the collection cap.
   

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Hi Fraser

Yeah that bulb would have looked real nice had it been bright  ;D

I agree probably not even getting 0.088Watts.

The problem is that my coil system just isn't efficient enough, so yes i can increase the pulse width and sustain a higher output power level, but it's all relative really, I need to work on getting the efficiency better, and it looks like there should be plenty of scope for improvement  ;)

Peter
   
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I was thinking other pulse widths may have other COP so the graph of COP against pulse width may look like gaussian curve with an optimum peak.

Have you tried any different ground schemes in the secondary side yet?
   

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Hi Fraser
Yes this is indeed an interesting point you make.

I have just done some data on frequency versus power in and power out.

The Setup is..

No primary cap or secondary cap, I am only using 1 of the secondary coils which has a 20kv 3Amp diode feeding my 5uF caps, across these caps i have a 230v spark gap.

I am pulsing using my controller with the pulse width set to 50nS.

There are some inconsistency's in the data, the first measurement of current to calculate the input power @ 10khz was probably a bit inacurate as i was using a 0-50ma moving iron meter to measure current and the current barely measured anything that i could see.

 I averaged the gap fire over 10 sparks and then worked out the average time for one fire, again at different frequency's the gap wasn't quenching very well and this effect slowed down the firing rate and has probably affected the output power calc to be low, but on the other hand when the gap fires properly the spark probably quenches before the 5uF caps are at 0volts and therefore already have some charge ready for the next firing of the gap.

Anyway 2 charts Power In versus Power Out and then Efficiency

Peter
   

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don says his device has an output of 8kv at 20 amperes.  I find this hard to believe.
   

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It's not as complicated as it may seem...
Don also says that a neon sign transformer or supply is an OU device in itself  ::)

Don says a lot of things....hopefully most of it is true and worthwhile noting.

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This is probably a stupid idea but all this AG stuff got me thinking about your build.  What if don was hiding the real pickup windings under the red windings...actually maybe the wires wrapped around the tube are hollow and then the wires that are wrapped underneath at the 45 degree angle are pulled into the hollow red wrapping and pulled through the middle part of the tube and connected to the actual connections!

Food for thought  ;)
   
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Don't go insane!

We spoke in the chat about this...
Why is there the kinda weird NST-to-Tesla style step up coil in the setup?
The NST raises the voltage which is then feed into the Tesla style coil which raises the voltage even more... this does not make much sense..

Especially since all that don wants to do with it, is generate the spark to exite the transformer winding.
Why not do that with a multiplier and so without all the weird stepping up-stepping up stuff?
And i too think the reported power levels are a questionmark.

Marco.
   

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Close your eyes marco

I wouldn't put it past SM in the TPU

But i think it's unlikely with Don

I think if there's any fraud in Don's stuff it would be that he hast shown us what a working device looks like.

If the answer is criss cross windings then we should see this in some of tesla's stuff

Personally i think the answer is in the special non inductive pancake coil, to cancel the inductive component and hertzian waves but leave the time domain component wave, this would be a much more efficient form of generating these without having to use the hairpin and highly inefficient spark gap setup.

Peter
   

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Close your eyes marco

I wouldn't put it past SM in the TPU

But i think it's unlikely with Don

I think if there's any fraud in Don's stuff it would be that he hast shown us what a working device looks like.

If the answer is criss cross windings then we should see this in some of tesla's stuff

Personally i think the answer is in the special non inductive pancake coil, to cancel the inductive component and hertzian waves but leave the time domain component wave, this would be a much more efficient form of generating these without having to use the hairpin and highly inefficient spark gap setup.

Peter

Turbo is correct.

Don was trying to make a buck (a dollar or two or three...)

It's curious that other detailed plans and descriptions sit on a shelf or drawer or in a box while people keep looking for something else.
   
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Hello Peter and respected researchers,

amazing replication you are doing here Peter. Thank you for sharing your most excellent work.

I have a question regarding a comment Don Smith said in the interview video. He said that if we calculate the power in vs power out of a Neon transformers it would come to OU.

I know that Peter looked into this before and the Ventex specs. says that this is calculated as an equivalent brightness of electromagnetic transformer.

However I was looking at different transformers available on eBay and most of them don't state this and I even found one that even has the measurement in RMS, see attached picture.

If we do the math it's OU ???

Here's the ebay link to the item: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260536620346&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT

Anyways, I was thinking of buying one to play with but I think I'll get a 12vdc one to start.

Thanks again for this great research work Peter

Luc
   
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