I think the hardest part is measuring the input and output, especially measuring input power when there are extremely short spikes in power when charging capacitors. Most meters won't react quick enough to measure them, so you might be misled when it shows, say, 25W input power, when it might have spiked to 500W for less than a millisecond.
Hi Lee,
Would like to mention, that normally the extremely short spikes riding on supply rails in such pulsed circuits carry but a negligible power just because of the very short time they exist. A spike with a 500 W peak power may have say just under a watt average or mean power. You could say "many a little makes a mickle" though...
...
I think what it boils down to is - charge a small capacitor to a high voltage using a fairly large resistance to limit current, then use this to charge a larger capacitor to a lower voltage via a coil / inductor (doesn't have to be an air core transformer like Don Smith did). I don't think it requires much current at all to charge a small capacitance. Don Smith used the fact that the secondary coil of a NST is current limited using a magnetic shunt (gap in core), which enables him to generate a high voltage at low current.
There is another way that I know of that works entirely from capacitors without involving a NST or ZVS. You pump power into a coil, turn it off sharply and then capture the inductive kickback to charge multiple capacitors via diodes. This is the method that John Bedini used. What he found was that you can charge multiple capacitors from the inductive kickback in parallel, where the coil becomes a current source at the point when the power is switched off abruptly. The quicker you turn off power, the quicker the magnetic field collapses, and the larger the kickback voltage will be. The magnetic field collapses at the speed of light, and this cuts through the wires and generates an EMF. The current continues in the same direction except that it is now reverse polarity compared to the original input current. John Bedini uses specially modified transistors to achieve a sharper turn off time. He cut off the tops of TO-3 transistors and connected a 'cat's whisker' wire to the silicon. These days we have super fast SiC MOSFETs capable of switching 2000V with rise & fall times of <5ns.
The design that I'm working on is a hybrid of these two approaches.
Well, would you mind discussing this? Charging up a given capacitor to a certain voltage level establishes its stored energy, E= C x V
2 / 2 if you agree. The charge up time is established by t = R x C. It is okay that you can take out much more power from this capacitor if you choose the discharge time much smaller than the t charge up time was but the energy remains the one given by the formula, it cannot change. IT is okay that you can get a very high discharge current from this capacitor for a very short time, the shorter the time the higher the peak current but if the effect of this high peak current does not create something useful to have a kind of "gain", then you are left with the same energy the capacitor have had (minus losses). And the capacitor has to be charged up periodically of course with energy to have its stored energy which are equal (minus losses) IF there is no "gain".
The same applies for coils, they store E = L x I
2 / 2 this is what you input with your current. The inductive kickback (a voltage spike) can only include as much energy as the input current has established if you agree.
IT is okay that you can charge multiple capacitors from a coil at field collapse but the energy content of this field is a given, meaning the captured energy content of all the capacitors should sum up to the field energy the input current created in the coil (minus losses).
A small correction if I may, you wrote: "
The current continues in the same direction except that it is now reverse polarity compared to the original input current."
The current will have the same direction and will have the same polarity (not reversed), ok? What reverses is the polarity of the created voltage spike by the field collapse if we compare its polarity to the input voltage we switched across the coil to start coil current. The input current creates an increasing magnetic field (till full saturation) and from the switch-off moment the current starts decreasing hence the field decreases too (the direction of induction in the coil changes if you like).
So if there is no "gain" obtained somehow in such a circuit, then we are left with COP < 1 performance, IMHO.
Please look at these posts at the other forum where member Mem built a Don Smith-like circuit and asked whether he had ou ?
https://overunity.com/19484/high-amps-from-3-volts-is-this-an-ou-circuit/msg578321/#msg578321 And I suggested him to attempt looping it, hopefully he will do it. From his setup, the only hope I can see to have any "gain" (I mention above), hence a successful looping is if the spark gap attracts free ions, electrons from the air to increase output power hence energy... as turns out maybe happening from one of your links' paper you referred to the other day.
Gyula