OverUnity Research

To keep your thread clear of my attempt, i am starting here.

I see the problem you mention about me driving this with my fet stage, i have very little current drive ability, and as you say i would need to construct a transformer and drive with a high voltage.

I am now thinking that maybe i can use 2 IXTK80N25 in parallel and drive from a fet driver, these fets are rated at 250V 80A,
Connect the source pin straight to one side of the bifilar, connect a low esr across the drain(GND) and the power supply and other end of the bifilar.


Can i ask, can you see any problems with me doing it this way.

EDIT Is there anything i need to do, to stop the smoke, i will heat sink both together


For a heat test, it would be possible to place the bifilar in a hose and blow air down one end and measure the temperature of the air at the other, we could then compare this to another tube same length with a resistor and then pump power into the resistor until we get the same temperature out the other end.

The part you mention is good for 250 amps in pulse mode, limited by the junction temperature T jm. I would start with a single device, 1 uS pulse width  and keep the pulse repetition rate low as you monitor the junction  temp. !50 C is the maximum.

Paralleling the FETS may cause current hogging in one unless equalizing resistors are used.....a waste of pulse energy.

I would play it safe and use a matching transformer. My CMC with 10 turns added equaled 13.3 to 1 current transformation. This is far less stressful to the driving device

You have some good ideas for the heat test.  Good luck with your build. If you could whip up a schematic, I can comment further.

Off to do more research.

OK lashed out on some 20 SWG enamelled wire this is a bit thicker than 20 AWG equivalent to 19 AWG

SWG  CSA                Resistance   Diameter
20    0.6567mm²    0.026 3    0.914mm

I have now measured the resistance of my bifilar at 0.0817 Ohms

I will use a ferrite ring to wind my transformer, i will try to match my secondary turns resistance to  the bifilar resistance, once i know how many turns that takes i can work out my primary turns ratio.

Still looking for a thyristor, not had much time yet.

My core is OD 30mm ID 20mm height 22mm

OK i have 8 Turns for the secondary which measures 0.0803 Ohms
106 turns secondary
Having measured this i seem to have 1.865 Ohms which is a ratio of 23.225 so not quiet sure whats going on here as i have rechecked the primary resistance and it's correct. How can i be so far out(maybe there was 7 turns on the primary but even this would be wrong, i suspect theres something going on with this meter).I used the same spool of wire.

So using your 13.3 ratio i would need 106 turns for my primary

I will probably need to wind my own supply choke so i get 200 Ohms, probably use another core the same for this.

It looks like my weapon of choice is the BT151-500 Thyristor

Diacs and thyristors are now ordered.

This LCR meter of mine uses 1 of 4 frequencies to measure at 100hZ, 120Hz,1kHz and 10kHz, it would appear i measured the resistance of the wire when not on the ferrite core and cut this to match the resistance of the bifilar, now i have wound this on the core it's reading 0.148Ohms

What is going on with this meter, on 10kHz setting i am getting 312 Ohms Grr bearing in mind i don't have it set for impedance but resistance.

I'm confused, it would appear i have a meter that cannot read the correct resistance of a wire. :-[

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.09.30, 14:36:17
This LCR meter of mine uses 1 of 4 frequencies to measure at 100hZ, 120Hz,1kHz and 10kHz, it would appear i measured the resistance of the wire when not on the ferrite core and cut this to match the resistance of the bifilar, now i have wound this on the core it's reading 0.148Ohms

What is going on with this meter, on 10kHz setting i am getting 312 Ohms Grr bearing in mind i don't have it set for impedance but resistance.

I'm confused, it would appear i have a meter that cannot read the correct resistance of a wire. :-[

Probably be best to just calculate it from the length, as it is not that critical. You don't need to perfectly match the resistance of the secondary to the resistance of the bifilar. It will cause the ohmic losses to be matched meaning half the power will be spent in the ohmic resistance of the bifilar, the other half in the ohmic resistance of the secondary.

For our test purposes, we just want a reasonable current step up into the bifilar. A lower resistance heavy guage secondary will put more of the power into the bifilar, so I would use the heaviest guage you have lying around for the secondary and leave enough room for the primary.

To keep things reasonable, the primary can have an ampacity 10 to 20 times less than the secondary.

I'm going to rewind my secondary with heavier guage, still minding the turns ratio (approx). This will put more of the power into the bifilar as less will be soaked up with secondary resistance and wind up as heat.

Hope this helps

Thanks ION i definitely have 13.33 turns ratio from primary to secondary, but have used thinner wire on my secondary, so i will switch it over to 20 SWG in that case. O0

Here's the coil.

18Swg Primary 106 Turns
20 Swg Secondary Now 9 Turns was 8 of 18Swg

ION your input supply choke must be huge something like 5H at a guess, these are immensely expensive, can you see any reason why i could not use the primary of a mains transformer for this, only an idea, i will do some measurements tomorrow when i get to work and see what resistance and inductance they are.

This bifilar reminds me of something i once had seen on a work bench, it was audio related and if i remember had long springs down it's length, some a bit older than me and into audio will know what it was, maybe echo,delay, reverb unit or something, i seem to remember it being really long maybe 3 feet, mind you this is years ago.

I don't have a way to measure it accurately right now. I suppose I could resonate it with a known value cap and look at the peak resonant rise vs. freq, then work backwards from there.

Edit: It looks like 3.2 H, 60 Hz resonant with a 2.2uF cap

Yes you can use the primary of a small mains transformer, that would work fine.

My choke is very small, like the kind of audio transformer you find mounted on a small PM speaker, 2 x 1.5 x 1.5 inches approx.

By the way the primary of a small audio transformer like this would work just fine.

A larger choke with less resistive loss would be more efficient, but I'm not worrying about circuit power dissipation just yet as I can optimize that later. The important thing is the energy delivered to the load, and this is easily calculated from the capacitor charge, cap value, and pulse repetition rate. Just scoping the input to the bifilar can tell you a lot about the energy transfer.

Here's a pic of the rusty devil

That's great news ION, I will do some measurements when i get to work.

Thanks for going to the trouble of measuring your transformer.

OK i have found out what the spring acoustic device was i had seen, i don't think it's relevant but was just interested as i knew it used acoustic vibration, turns out it was a reverb unit.

http://www.amplifiedparts.com/tech_corner/spring_reverb_tanks_explained_and_compared

I measured the inductance of my bifilar

with the meter set to 1kHz setting
L=210uH and Q=0.062 then separated i get L=84.2uH and Q=0.1602

Then i switched to 10kHz and got these results
L= 3.048uH Q= 0.565 then Separated i get 2.94uH Q=1.609

I found it impossible to get a stable reading when the meter was set to 10Hz maybe because of the mains in the room at 50Hz

So although the impedance goes down when separated the Q goes up

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.10.04, 15:26:56
I measured the inductance of my bifilar

with the meter set to 1kHz setting
L=210uH and Q=0.062 then separated i get L=84.2uH and Q=0.1602

Then i switched to 10kHz and got these results
L= 3.048uH Q= 0.565 then Separated i get 2.94uH Q=1.609

I found it impossible to get a stable reading when the meter was set to 10Hz maybe because of the mains in the room at 50Hz

So although the impedance goes down when separated the Q goes up

Those readings are counter-intuitive and defy theory for sure, e.g. there should be minimum inductance when the wires are parallel and touching, maximum inductance when they are separated to form a loop or rectangle.

What gives?

Sorry ION

I will recheck tomorrow, maybe i should not have used my fingers to separate the wire, either that or it's the meter, i will try measuring a known inductor just to see whats going on with this dam meter.

EDIT how are you holding the end tight, i have a loop and then come back and twist around the wire, i then thread through this loop and pull, is that acceptable to do it this way

Not really sure whats going on then, i have rechecked and v=made a video of how the inductance meter reads during separation of the bifilar.

Are my end OK to be terminated in the way i have done, i have used copper rings screwed into a bench, i attach 2 pictures, 1 of each end, i use a second ring at the far end with string to tension the whole length of the bifilar.Maybe it's the rings or my twisted wire that's causing the problem.

PS i have not really tensioned as much as i need to, the wire is really thick and takes quiet a bit to tension it totally, i will tension them really hard when i run experiments.

May I suggest both of you compare the test signals from your inductance meters using the same type and value inductor.

According to the rules these outputs should not make a difference. They do.

Output wave shape and duration differences can show a swap in increase/decrease but only if the relative wire length is a multiple of a 1/4 wavelength. I can't imagine why the two results are opposite.

Hi WW
I am not sure what process this meter uses to calculate Inductance, in the manual it shows a formulae that it uses, i have scoped across the Test leads while it's measuring and cannot see that much, there is a pulse but very low voltage, my scope is set to 50mV/Div and 5uS/Div timebase, but this is background noise because it's still there when the Inductance meter is disconnected although a little less amplitude, looks to be about 6.6kHz so must be a switched mode psu in action somewhere or something similar, maybe my PC in another room or maybe even the scope?

So basically i cannot see any sort of driven wave from the Inductance meter

EDIT ah this is interesting when i dosconnect the inductance meter and just scope the bifilar, i still get the noise and if i separate the bifilar wires the signal get a bit stronger, so maybe this noise is confusing the meter reading.

Peterae

I borrowed that exact meter to run the inductance test on the 58" parallel wires. I don't remember the frequency setting so I will have to borrow it again and re-run the test  at different settings.

Glad to see you are using the Kelvin clips, very important at low values of LC or R.

My wire are looped at the far end around a tiny piece of wood like a toothpick.

I cannot at this time explain the differences, but not to worry, you will have some fun when your SCR's arrive.

We'll have to backtrack over this soon.

My thyristors have arrived now and the diacs, just need to pick up a pot in the morning and knock it up on a bit of vero, i will try to join as close as possible to the thyristor legs, my biggest problem is time in the next couple of days, flat out at work for the last 2 weeks now  :(

Not sure if i will be ready until the weekend

My transformer primary measured quiet low under half a Henry, so still not sure what i am going to do here, going to have a rummage at home now to see what other transformers i have.

That meter has 2 versions, it's only the A that does 10kHz, not sure if the other one does 100Hz,120Hz and 1kHz i seem to remember it does.

I was also trying to track that 6kHz signal, i switched of everything i could think of, PC, CCTV supply, credit card machine etc and it was still there, but on the way home i realized i have about 20 high power cfl spot lights on all the time, so will check these in the morning.

I'm glad you jumped on this experiment as well Peterae,   may I suggest something for both you and Ion?   

Keep the two wires that repell each other spaced apart by a short distance so they don't hit each other, maybe 1 cm.   The magnetic field generated under those amps will be strong enough to repell them, that should not be the worry.   The worry should be not to have them banging into each other when they recoil.    We want to have a type of stringed instrument where the strings can vibrate at their natural frequency based on the stiffness and mass of the wire.

EM   

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.10.05, 17:30:59
My thyristors have arrived now and the diacs, just need to pick up a pot in the morning and knock it up on a bit of vero, i will try to join as close as possible to the thyristor legs, my biggest problem is time in the next couple of days, flat out at work for the last 2 weeks now  :(

Not sure if i will be ready until the weekend

My transformer primary measured quiet low under half a Henry, so still not sure what i am going to do here, going to have a rummage at home now to see what other transformers i have.

That meter has 2 versions, it's only the A that does 10kHz, not sure if the other one does 100Hz,120Hz and 1kHz i seem to remember it does.

I was also trying to track that 6kHz signal, i switched of everything i could think of, PC, CCTV supply, credit card machine etc and it was still there, but on the way home i realized i have about 20 high power cfl spot lights on all the time, so will check these in the morning.

Peterae

Don't worry about the choke so much, nearly any reasonable choke in range of 1-3 Henries will work. I have not tried others, but I'm sure they will work also.

The main function of the choke is to allow the SCR to be reset by the back EMF or ringing in the output inductor. If there is not enough inductance in the choke, the SCR will latch on and you will have to manually interrupt power to get reset. This is one of the drawbacks of the circuit.

I suggest you start at a low voltage value from your power supply say 50 Volts. Also would be valuable to limit the current to around 100 mA. This will protect the SCR for initial tests. You can run the voltage up when you are sure all is working well.

EM

Thanks for the suggestion about the wires spacing.

QuoteI suggest you start at a low voltage value from your power supply say 50 Volts. Also would be valuable to limit the current to around 100 mA. This will protect the SCR for initial tests. You can run the voltage up when you are sure all is working well.

That's good advice thanks ION, i can only go to 125V on my supply anyway so may end up putting more turns on the primary yet.

I will do some initial tests and see where they point me.

OK Well i built the board and we are up and running, but a couple of things yet, i only had a 330n Cap to start with, and the transformer choke is under 1H and reads 25 Ohms so must find the time to get a better one.

The frequency can be quiet high when i adjust the pot, i am not getting a big kick on the wires but can see them jiggling slightly, so must fix the above problems yet, but at least i am running.

A couple of times at power up i have seen the wire jolt quiet hard.

Run out of time for now

From the scope shots at the lowest frequency i am running at just under 50Hz
Red trace is across the bifilar, the yellow trace is across the primary of my coil.
Red Trace is 1V/DIV & 5mS, Yellow Trace is 50V/DIV on BIF1

On Bif2 the timesbase is at 25uS same voltage settings.

Thyristor is running cool at my max voltage of 125V

EDIT my bifilar is 0.0817 Ohms, looks like i am dumping about 2.5 volts on the scope about 30 Amps  :-[

You know this has really convinced me i was on the right track with the fast delayed pulse stuff i was doing, if i hold a small magnet near the wire with the 30Amps i get a very little tug, well in my pulsers i get a massive tug and don't necessarily have a tight wound coil to feel this, what does that say about the power in my kicks, it will be interesting to compare 100amps when i get there

I have now changed C2 for 660nF, i only just noticed ION switched to a lower value than the circuit diagram 500nF so it looks like i may have gone the wrong way.


Any way here's 2 scope shots of the waveforms Bif4 & Bif5, Both traces are 50V/Div Bif4 is zoomed in on the timebase.
Red trace is at the choke/capacitor/anode junction with respect to ground
Yellow trace is C2/Transformer primary junction with respect to ground(across primary)

Bif6 is across the secondary 1V/Div

I am still running at a minimun setting which gives me just under 50Hz.

From what i can see the Choke and Capacitor are charging and discharging as expected Bif6 shows i have a 4V pulse which means i am now up to 49Amps and still only seeing a little bit of movement.

What do i need to do now to get my current up, is my choke too small, am i running at too higher frequency, do i need thicker wire on my primary and more turns?

I am running at just below 50Hz min adjusted, What frequency does yours run at, i had the impression you were in the low Hz

Sorry for the questions but the circuit seems to work well, maybe my problem is my supply only goes to 125V

Bif7 is across the Choke 50V/Div
Bif8 is across the primary 50V/Div

Hi Peterae

you asked:

QuoteWhat do i need to do now to get my current up, is my choke too small, am i running at too higher frequency, do i need thicker wire on my primary and more turns?

I am running at just below 50Hz min adjusted, What frequency does yours run at, i had the impression you were in the low Hz

Sorry for the questions but the circuit seems to work well, maybe my problem is my supply only goes to 125V

I will try to answer some of these questions in more detail as time permits, as I have been away from the lab and the forum for a while.

When I get back to it, I will try to make some more exacting measurements of PRR and applied voltage.

Recently I changed the discharge cap to 0.18 uF (measured) and have been able to operate between 300-400 volts and able to tune in to the strange burst mode.

Earlier I was operating at around 162 volts with a 0.47uF cap when I was getting the burst mode, so it appears a certain energy is required on my setup to initiate it.

Note that this will be different for each setup because of wire tension etc.

Also it worked (burst mode)  with my 3 H 200 Ohm choke but not with a lower resistance choke.

I am operating at a higher voltage, but perhaps you can use a larger discharge cap to get more energy, just be careful not to exceed the peak current rating of your SCR.

The burst mode will occur even without the wire attached, but produces extremely powerful vibrations when the wire is attached.

I've concluded the burst mode must be a function of the BEMF recharging the cap or a saturation phenomena of the choke.

In either case, I'm sure there are many ways to pulse the wires that do not involve such a temperamental oscillator system, and perhaps there are better ways of doing this such as your original noise testing setup.

As I recall somewhere between 2-4 msec PRR would trigger the burst mode.

My entire reason for doing these tests was to produce a vibrating wire setup that could later be formed into a circle so that I could try to reproduce the washboard and gyro effects with perhaps multiple PRR. I believe those floppy interior wires held in a foam like soft structure in the SM15 that was cut apart were the vibrating wires that are the source of the physical effects.

In effect I want to work backwards from the real physical effects, not to try to get OU out of the chute so to speak.

Be patient, I will try get more info as my schedule permits. Meanwhile try some higher resistance chokes if you have them handy.

QuoteMeanwhile try some higher resistance chokes if you have them handy.

Thanks ION will do

Sounds like you are doing some interesting stuff above, cannot wait to join the party  ;)

I'm off until Tuesday now so away from my bench, i have almost caught up with all the work so hopefully get some time this coming week.

The strange thing was that when i first powered up for the first time the wires on the bifilar clonked together with force, and a couple of times after that on power up, but since i have adjusted the pot to give me the lowest frequency i have not seen this, it's as if either the cap or choke got fully charged up on power up by accident a couple of times.

Thanks for the help much appreciated.

I remembered i had a MOT which i rewound the secondary for 320V and also added a filament winding for my valve pulsar, so i have just tried the primary and the 320V windings as my choke, still get very similar results, ticking but little increase in current.

I think i need some slightly thicker wire on the primary of my transformer, I am also going to lower the working frequency by increasing the 0.1 value.

If i turn the voltage down on my supply i can lower the frequency of operation by quiet a bit and there are a few spots, if i twang the bifilar i can start a small oscillation going, which seems to have a secondary wave rinding along the length.

Also placing a small neo magnet near the bifilar seems to change the noise from the driving circuit.

One other thing if i pull the bifilar apart i can see an increase in the amplitude of the scoped wave across the bifilar.

Peterae:

I lowered my supply voltage to 125 volts and was not able to get much vibration. Also the bursts were not possible at this voltage with my setup. I tried larger discharge caps, up to 1.5 uf but pulse width does not seem to be the issue (area under the curve), rather it seems a steep HV pulse, very narrow seems to produce better results.

When the wires are hit with a fast rise, high current, short duration pulse, the effect is most prevalent. I have used up to 400 VDC, but I don't recommend you do that as I don't know if your SCR will handle the peak currents generated.

Perhaps the leakage inductance will help protect your SCR, as I see considerable ringing on your waveform, indicative of high leakage inductance in your matching transformer or a severe mismatch. I do not get this much ringing.

I have acquired a few new chokes to try. Will report in when I have something interesting.

I hope EM and WW join us on the bench, as theoretical analysis can only go so far until we learn more about this "kick" generation. Then we can expand the model.

OK this makes sense, so it's possibly my low voltage supply.

I wondered what was causing the ringing, thanks for the explanation.

Just a thought, what would be the result of placing a spark gap in series with the primary, Mark Snoswell used the SG method of sharpening his fet drive stage pulses, maybe this would speed the off time, the on time is great about 25nS with my Thyristor

Anyway i will be spending more time on my drive stage over the next couple of evenings to try and get up and running, i wish i had a variac  :-\

Peterae,

Do you have a couple of transformers, a potentiometer and a 9V battery?  http://sparkbangbuzz.com/mag-amp/mag-amp.htm

This is an excellent replacement for a variac depending upon voltage and current requirements and what you have in your junk-box.

I do indeed, that is a fabulous answer to my problems Thanks WW

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.10.12, 16:01:07
I do indeed, that is a fabulous answer to my problems Thanks WW

Make sure you follow the instructions on checking transformer compatibility  ;)

Will do WW  O0

I went back to my 330nF C2 for now

I just wound a new transformer, i used quiet thick wire recovered from an old toroidal transformer, i wound 87 turns as bifilar and then series these for my primary giving me about 174 turns in total, i added about 7 turns of the same wire for my secondary.

The scope shot below is across my primary and secondary,

Green is primary 50V/div
Yellow is secondary 10V/div

Now if i am reading my secondary waveform correctly i have a 12V pulse across my bifilar which is 0.0817 Ohms
i make that 146 Amp pulse, yet my wire is jiggling i would say less than my previous setup.

I dont understand whats going on here, i just double checked both x10 swtiches were indeed flicked to x10 and they are.

At least i got rid of all that ringing.

very nice Peter,  I just noticed your work and the scope shots.   How far do the wires move when they kick?  is it a fraction of a mm? or slightly more?

Hi EM it was too good to be true.

I went to bed finding it hard to believe i really had that much current through the bifilar, as it should have been twanging a lot more than my previous setup, so i knew something was wrong somewhere.

This morning i checked for a primary to secondary short and i had one, i unwound the secondary 7 turns and it looks like i wired it up with one of my primaries LOL, so it looks like i was running the secondary and bifilar in series with a primary winding DOH, I still couldn't work out how i had that much voltage across my bifilar though, but my 2 scope earths would have shorted something out as well, anyway i stopped trying to work it out, re connected my primary correctly and rewound my secondary and now i am back to where i started.

See scope shot below.Much more realistic

So i have about a 3.8V pulse into 0.0817 Ohms giving me a 46.5 Amp pulse that's better(or not as the case is  :( )

I find it strange that having a thicker primary wire and a lot more turns has not increased my secondary current much, i have also decreased my bifilar wire gauge to the same as the transformer i wire and i have swapped to a smaller ferrite ring than my first transformer.

So unless i am missing something then it looks like the only way is to run at higher voltage, time to look at building the mag amp dimmer.

From Peterae:

QuoteI find it strange that having a thicker primary wire and a lot more turns has not increased my secondary current much, i have also decreased my bifilar wire gauge to the same as the transformer i wire and i have swapped to a smaller ferrite ring than my first transformer.

Having more turns on the primary will lower the secondary voltage. It is a function of the turns ratio between primary and secondary that will determine the transformation ratio for voltage. The current is the inverse of this but only if the impedance is matched.

e.g lets say you have 100 turns primary and 10 turn secondary.  If the primary pulse is 100 volts at one amp, it will be transformed to ten volts secondary at 10 amps provided the load, in this case the bifilar has a low enough resistance to circulate 10 amps.

Now lets say you increase the primary to 200 turns while maintaining a ten turn secondary.  Now your transformation ratio is 20 to 1 so a 100 volt one amp primary pulse will deliver five volts at 20 amps to the secondary, again only if there is an impedance match to the bifilar load.

The primary wire is carrying much less current than the secondary. It is good that you were able to use a thicker wire for the primary. A good rule of thumb is to keep the DC resistance of both primary and secondary as low as possible to while maintaining the turns ratio required.

In efficient transformer design, we strive to keep the DC resistance of primary and secondary as low as possible while maintaining turns ratio required. Issues such as how much of what gauge will fit on a given core are engineering tradeoffs, and reflect a solution to a design problem also considering cost and allowable heating of the transformer, as well as power loss we can tolerate in the transformer.

For lab work and since we are not trying to shave production cost, we can err on the side of overkill and thus overdesign our transformer. In this way maximum energy is transferred through the transformer and we need not consider those losses which will be an order of magnitude lower than the rest of the circuit components.

Longwinded, but hope this helps.

Quotee.g lets say you have 100 turns primary and 10 turn secondary.  If the primary pulse is 100 volts at one amp, it will be transformed to ten volts secondary at 10 amps provided the load, in this case the bifilar has a low enough resistance to circulate 10 amps.

Now lets say you increase the primary to 200 turns while maintaining a ten turn secondary.  Now your transformation ratio is 20 to 1 so a 100 volt one amp primary pulse will deliver five volts at 20 amps to the secondary, again only if there is an impedance match to the bifilar load.

Thanks ION i knew that  :-[ as usuall i didn't think it through fool.

OK so this is good, all i need to do is measure my primary resistance like i did for the bifilar, back step my calculation to work out what voltage i need to run at to produce 100 Amps pulse on my secondary, i can then see if my thyristor is good as well.

I could also do it the hard way, if i plot my secondary loaded voltage against supply voltage i should be able to plot for the required 100Amps and obtain the psu voltage.

Again thankyou for tolerating a fool, your patience is much appreciated.

EDIT i am amazed at how efficient this driver circuit appears, i am only drawing between 1-2mA right now @ 125 V or 0.125W-0.25W

From Peterae:

QuoteOK so this is good, all i need to do is measure my primary resistance like i did for the bifilar, back step my calculation to work out what voltage i need to run at to produce 100 Amps pulse on my secondary, i can then see if my thyristor is good as well.

Don't be concerned with the primary resistance, just keep it as low as possible while respecting turns ratio.

Keep the secondary resistance as low as possible while also respecting turns ratio.

In other words, fill the core with as large a wire as it will hold, respecting turns ratio.

You can add taps to the primary to adjust the impedance match to the bifilar, this will give you an adjustable turns ratio stepped according to the taps thus allowing fine tuning of the system.

I don't want to divert you guys from the current setup, lots to explore for sure,  but I think I'll implement a different approach to this experiment.   I like discharging a capacitor's energy directly into the wires, and I might just do that directly with an SCR and a very low ESR capacitor bank.  Than we can eliminate the transformer and not worry about the impedance matching issue.   But we must have a good SCR, get those nice big pucks for hundreds of amps!   O0
We might even explode wire!   >:-)

Sounds Interesting EM, If you place your wire into a tube you will pretty silvered tubes  ;D

I would love to try a few things as well, it would be really great to trigger 2 scr's from my digital delay monos and i would like to try flat wire as well.

I just dug out a supply i had in the loft i had forgotten all about, it has 2 transformers back to back 240-25VAC and a 18V to 240VAC was giving over 400 V in it's original config, so just swapped it over to give 250VDC, looks like i am good to jiggle shortly  :)

Quote from: EMdevices on 2011.10.13, 17:50:23
I don't want to divert you guys from the current setup, lots to explore for sure,  but I think I'll implement a different approach to this experiment.   I like discharging a capacitor's energy directly into the wires, and I might just do that directly with an SCR and a very low ESR capacitor bank.  Than we can eliminate the transformer and not worry about the impedance matching issue.   But we must have a good SCR, get those nice big pucks for hundreds of amps!   O0
We might even explode wire!   >:-)

Yes EM that is an alternate approach and valid. I've got quite a few of those large hockey puck SCR's and some of the mono block types.

I've refrained from using them, preferring to finesse the design rather than use the  heavy handed approach. You need to be sure of proper drive, risetime and hold current to the gate to be sure you get complete propagation and turn on of current across the wafer otherwise you will develop a hot spot and melt a hole through a portion of the wafer.

That's why I chose the Diac turn on technique. You can make the circuit work with just some resistance divider to the gate but this is hard on the SCR.

At least that's how it was in the early days of SCR drive, perhaps more modern devices do not have this issue.

Also you need a little ringing to allow the SCR to commutate off otherwise you will have to reset the system for every pulse. The matching transformer's leakage inductance does this nicely, although it can limit risetime.

If you choose to eliminate the matching transformer, you can experiment with gate turn-off techniques, such as the utilization of a small inductor gate to cathode. Or you can add a little inductance in the drive path to facilitate turn off.

Regardless of the approach I think you will be surprised when you hit the sweet spot of electro-acoustic resonance, which seems to occur at rather low PRR, in my setup between 100-200 PPS.

The wire excursions can be quite violent at that point and there seems to be some type of regenerative feedback from the wire. I have not explored this to my satisfaction, but it is worthy of further study. Perhaps it will verify your theory.

i have now powered up using 250V supply, my bifilar is still not jiggling, strange really i would say the wires seem to be sticking together as if charged, maybe this is my imagination.

Anyway looks to me now i have a bit more current in my pulse, but there's a nasty kink to the bottom of the waveform, maybe core saturation?
Looks like i am briefly hitting 10V across my bifilar which is 122 Amps  8) just need to work out why there's little movement  :-\

Quotein my setup between 100-200 PPS

I had not realized you were operating this high, i thought we were looking at 10's of Hz in that case i will try adjusting up from my current min setting.

EDIT crap when i start increasing the frequency the bifilar still doesn't jiggle but it gets dam hot real fast
maybe i need to start shortening the pulse width that area under the curve is currently 25-30uS
I am using copper rings at each end to anchor the bifilar down, it's just occurred to me these must be like 1 turn short circuit loops? could this be my problem maybe

you can see these rings in my photo post 13
http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=1128.msg17469#msg17469

My wires are stretched pretty tight, but do tend to loosen a bit if they heat up.

On my setup sweeping up from a low repetition rate, I hit the sweet spot but then this is hard to track and I loose it as the wire heats.

I'm beginning to think I need to zener regulate the diac supply at maybe 100 volts or less to provide some stability to the firing point. I also need a constant tension setup for the wires.

My HP power supply went south from some inductive kickback so I'll have to repair that. I recommend a brute force supply for some of these trials or use an isolation diode.

I don't think your rings are a problem, but you could try using plastic.

Try lowering your cap to .1 to .2 uF and try sweeping up from a very low rep rate. 10 to 100 Hz.

You may need some high value resistors to cut the rep rate down. Here's alternate circuit with wider adjustment range and zener regulation of the frequency control. I have not yet tested it

Cheers ION i will swap over my 0.1 for 0.2, i am still using a 330nF for C2 as well just checked and this is getting hot very fast as well, thyristor is cool.

My wires are stretched quiet tight as well, but do not seem to move much if at all, something not quiet right yet, i will try some more things tomorrow night.

ION,   thank you for those insights on the need of the inductance for turn off.     The zenners you added are a great addition as well,  I always try to have some form of regulation when it comes to timing circuits so they don't drift with supply voltages changes. 

I just realized that I can use one of my blocking oscillators to create a nice stable series of spikes that is very short with a high dV/dt, and I think this will turn on the SCR quickly, so we don't have the problems you mentioned.   

Peterae,  you have all this current and the wires don't move that much?  Hmmm?  You might have a point about them sticking together,  I never thought of this, but if they are realy close,  what if the electrostatic attraction between the wires is slighlty larger then the magnetic repulsion?   I'll have to do some calculations  :-\

EM

I have taken the copper rings off this morning, very little change really, if i sweep the pot i go from low audible ticking to what i would guess as a few hundred Hz, i will try to get some scope shots of this, but the result on the bifilar seems to be a fairly linear increase of repulsion across the length when running at the top end frequency, i can clearly see the bifilar start to separate from each other, i also realize i must be upping the overall dissipation in some of the components and soon start smelling overheating, although my C2 gets hot i think this maybe the pot, the thyristor runs cool, not sure about the diac yet.

I am still missing something, next i will try a smaller C2.

Be forewarned any who attempt to build this circuit.

I have lost 3 power supplies that I have used over twenty years or more without a problem.

The circuit or something is generating an occasional large snap like a big capacitor discharge and takes out the power supply.

Even when I isolate the supply with diodes and an outboard cap, I have still had power supply failures.

I suggest anyone who wishes to experiment with this use a Variac, an isolation transformer and simple voltage doubler circuit to derive the 200 to 300 Volts DC required for it's operation. DO NOT USE YOUR GOOD SOLID STATE BENCH SUPPLY!!


I've got two repaired and one to go before I'm back on the bench, but I won't be using these supplies for this circuit.

Getting close to Halloween and this is spooky!

(P.S. anyone who can help me find a schematic for an ISS Enprotech 500 / 500 I will be very grateful)

Muhuwaaaaaa!
Dudes! Remember my youtube vid where I grab the coil and snap the GFIs from the back side?
Well you just found another way to do this.
And yes my power supply is variac based!.
Talk about energy!
Sorry about your power supplies but you violated circuit ground.

http://stores.intuitwebsites.com/hstrial-writebid/-strse-9/ISS-Enprotech-ISS-/Detail.bok (http://stores.intuitwebsites.com/hstrial-writebid/-strse-9/ISS-Enprotech-ISS-/Detail.bok) Pay him for manual copies.

At this level of energy speed, diodes become straight wires. Both ways. Jason and I both fought this effect only to realize what was going on.
Now if you are talking about capturing this with iron wire, it will conduct like a wire after capture. You use a HV scope probe or follow Otto's advice by just leaving your probes disconnected in close proximity.

Quote from: ION on 2011.10.14, 22:05:33
Be forewarned any who attempt to build this circuit.

I have lost 3 power supplies that I have used over twenty years or more without a problem.

The circuit or something is generating an occasional large snap like a big capacitor discharge and takes out the power supply.

Even when I isolate the supply with diodes and an outboard cap, I have still had power supply failures.

I suggest anyone who wishes to experiment with this use a Variac, an isolation transformer and simple voltage doubler circuit to derive the 200 to 300 Volts DC required for it's operation. DO NOT USE YOUR GOOD SOLID STATE BENCH SUPPLY!!


I've got two repaired and one to go before I'm back on the bench, but I won't be using these supplies for this circuit.

Getting close to Halloween and this is spooky!

(P.S. anyone who can help me find a schematic for an ISS Enprotech 500 / 500 I will be very grateful)

Sorry to hear that ION, Thanks for the warning.

I am unable to find the requested diagram this time  :(

My pot smoked last night, too low wattage, cannot seem to get a 1 watt easily without a min £££ order, any way i will introduce your zener mod tonight, this will at least cut the high voltage down across a new pot.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.10.15, 06:34:23
Sorry to hear that ION, Thanks for the warning.

I am unable to find the requested diagram this time  :(

My pot smoked last night, too low wattage, cannot seem to get a 1 watt easily without a min £££ order, any way i will introduce your zener mod tonight, this will at least cut the high voltage down across a new pot.

Your pot should have been current limited if you used the 100K safety resistor shown in the schematic. I always add some current limit to prevent burning up parts. Hope your diac survived.

I'm going to rig up a robust variac based power supply for future testing, but will be down for a while.

I get a lot of parts from old radios, TV chassis, and monitors, this keeps the budget down and not such a loss if I smoke a part. I just ripped down an old Dumont chassis from the early 50's. What a wealth o parts, including a large 4 Henry choke, monster power transformer, numerous tuning coils,lots of pots, assorted values, tubes, and by the way, the vertical output transformer is very close to that used in the Hendershot machine.

Don't worry about the schematic, I'm close to having it running again.

Shame i am not in the TV game anymore, i wish i had kept some of the chassis i worked on during early 80's and even kept a few set's and early video going as well, we would hire a large van once in a while and take a trip to dump, looking back even some of these were real gems and no where to be found these days.

The preset pot i used was under rated even with the 100K limiting the current, I grabbed some beefy zeners and resistors this morning, luckily i ordered 5 diacs and 5 thyristors knowing my previous history  :) and they were cheap enough from ebay anyway, so will start a new build and just use my transformer.

having reviewed your early posts, i realize now my pulse was way too large something around 40uS if i remember correctly, yours is low uS so this is my first task to get this down, it maybe a 40uS pulse is quiet wide with respect to it travelling down the wire to cause localized repulsion.

Hopefully my power supply is quiet robust, i am using a 240-18V then connecting a 25-240V, so each primary is connected together, this lowers the UK rectified DC from 330 to about 250VDC and gives me isolation as well, i stick a rectifier and reservoir cap on the final winding and have primary and secondary fuses, but the variac would be best and then i could vary as well, although i may try the mag controlled dimmer to vary yet, just trying to see the effect first before i need to start adjustments, i also cannot see any reason why i could not use a cheap inductor hardened dimmer to drive my transformer primary.

Circuit works well ION used 21K for 250VDC supply
Frequency varies between 10Hz and 1kHz
I am using 50nF for C2 to try and bring my pulse width down which it has but not as much as i had hoped @ 17-18uS under the curve.

Is it normal to get that big negative pulse at the start of the ringing.
I am getting about 5 volts neg pulse which is about 61Amps, i can see the wire wriggling slightly, maybe my amps are down because of my low C2.

that neg pulse at the start of the flyback is bigger and shorter @ 8V or 98amps.

Also when i turn the pot and start getting near the end of travel the frequency increases quiet fast up to 1kHz i can hear this audibly and the secondary amplitude starts getting bigger.

My question is how do i get my pulse sharper.

Maybe lowering my bifilar wire diameter will allow me to see more movement, maybe i need to try another transformer with more primary turns or run at a higher supply voltage.

Using my Chan2 probe not connected to anything,bearing in mind the other probe has a common ground, when i sniff the waveform by holding chan2 probe near the bifilar, i get an inversion of the waveform when near the transformer end and as i move away a few inches the waveform starts flipping over until the waveform matches the secondary waveform, very strange to see this, maybe i will remember to bring my camera home and shoot a vid of it.

Peterae,

What you describe matches the actions found when suffering the proximity effect. This will limit the wire movements and cause higher wire resistance. When you hit the loop with a high pulse the wires may be forced together.

In that case, try hitting the wire with less energy, initially, or increasing the gap between the wires.

Good luck to EM on calculating the eddy currents and wire attraction over repulsion  ;)

Peterae said:

QuoteMy question is how do i get my pulse sharper.

Maybe lowering my bifilar wire diameter will allow me to see more movement, maybe i need to try another transformer with more primary turns or run at a higher supply voltage.

Do not add more turns to your matching transformer primary. This is the wrong direction. Fewer turns on the primary and secondary will sharpen the pulse (again respecting turns ratio)

I suggest the next time you wind a transformer, put taps on the primary (and maybe a few on the secondary so that you can experiment with different ratio's and overall inductance.

You will not see what I have been seeing, because I think I have identified the factor that has been creating the violent excursions.

It's a bit complicated to explain, but had to do with a resonant interaction between my choke and power supply. It can be simulated with a few extra parts. I will try t0 draw something up to show what has been happening.

It is exciting because there is a real interaction between the change of inductance in the vibrating wires, some return of energy that seems to pump up a resonant circuit formed by the choke and the 1uF 400 Volt capacitor that is internal to my power supply.

This resonance would build and took out the power transistor in the series regulator circuit of my power supply.

You may be able to simulate this effect by decoupling your power supply with a diode and putting a 1uF cap to ground on the circuit side. The cap should be of the highest quality, like a Vitamin Q from Sprague, definitely a high quality film type, not electrolytic. Orange drops may work.

I'll keep you up to date and draw something up.

Peterae:

Here is the circuit I am now using to simulate the effect I was getting with my bench supply.

It features a decoupling diode, D5, which allows the choke and the 1 uf cap C4 to build resonance. This is the key to the bursts and violent wire oscillations.

Also features a zener pedestal that starts the CCW of the pot close to the trigger point of the Diac. You can stack some 16 V zeners or any combination to get the 32 volts for D2. D3 is not critical and determines the frequency adj range along with R3. Pot R1 can be anything that does steal too much current from D3, generally 5K or more.

R2 needs to be sized according to your desired circuit operating voltage, so that the zeners are not starved or dissipating too much power. e.g 5mA across 32 V= 160 mW of power dissipated in the zener

Also  a protective lamp on the primary, which prevents blowing a fuse should your SCR latch up. It is a handy indicator lamp that gives you a rough idea of your power draw. Of course a Kill A Watt meter on the input would also be helpful.

Feel free to ask questions. I'll have an update with more findings soon.

QuoteDo not add more turns to your matching transformer primary. This is the wrong direction. Fewer turns on the primary and secondary will sharpen the pulse (again respecting turns ratio)

I suggest the next time you wind a transformer, put taps on the primary (and maybe a few on the secondary so that you can experiment with different ratio's and overall inductance.

Thanks for this advice ION, i am in the process of winding another coil.

QuoteYou will not see what I have been seeing, because I think I have identified the factor that has been creating the violent excursions.

Fabulous

ION said:

QuoteYou will not see what I have been seeing, because I think I have identified the factor that has been creating the violent excursions.

Bet don't be dismayed. You can simulate my bench supply by adding the decoupling diode and 1 uf 400 volt cap as shown in the schematic.

I've also found that it works better with raw pulsating DC so you can eliminate the 100 uF 450 volt shown in the schematic. There are some beat frequencies with the pulsating DC but this does not seem to hurt and makes the burst effect easily obtainable.

It also tends to prevent lockup of the SCR. A lamp on the supply side is a good indicator of lockup and gives the energy somewhere to go when the SCR does lock on, so you won't have nuisance fuse blowing. 60 to 75 Watts seems to work nicely on my setup.

The system works best when there are a burst of about ten cycles and then a relaxation time. It seems a single pulse with a relaxation time or off time (low repetition rate) does not produce the effect but is required to initiate auto trigger when the pulse amplitude is high enough.

I believe the burst occurs when the resonance in the choke capacitor combo auto triggers the SCR. Normal background pulsing at a low rate is needed to to trigger the effect.

Continuous pulsing at a higher rate does not  produce the effect.

Those first few cycles in the burst produce the violent wire movement. And the relaxation time is definitely needed.



What do I think is happening? Not sure but I have a theory.

If the free electrons have time to precess and align with a external magnetic field, the effect seems to occur.

When hit with repetitive pulses, they do not have time to precess to their rest position. The violence of movement is so high, I cannot account for it occurring via normal repulsion effects especially since it does not occur with single pulses of low repetition rate..

This could be the kick SM talked about but I will have to try it with a single wire to be rule out repulsion effects.

I will also try a wider pulse that equals the width of the burst.

I know I have been changing parameters, but it has taken me some time to identify the mechanisms and effects.

Please be patient. I know this is a bit confusing. More to come.

I thankyou ION for bothering to put the time into keeping us informed and design circuits to build, very rare anyone would bother.

You know your setup reminds me of a valve amp stage in which SM could well have found the original principle of operation, i say this because of your large series choke, your highish to low impedance output transformer or should i say driving with high voltage, i have suspected for some time that any excess energy would manifest on the primary side of the drive transformer, because of his saying the device starts to feed itself.

Be safe.

Getting a little worried the wrong people may see your posts, just in case you are on the right path.Although in my bench here, guests don't get to see it only members.

I have had to take a few days away from this, but just ordered a variac which i have been meaning to acquire for many years.

OK picking up on this again now i have my Variac, just ordering some 32V Zeners.

For the new build.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.10.26, 14:05:24
OK picking up on this again now i have my Variac, just ordering some 32V Zeners.

For the new build.

Peterae:

My most recent experiments showed that the choke can be eliminated and replaced with a power resistor. The value and power will depend on the desired repetition rate.

The triggering is now more stable since there is no choke to cause ringing.

The disadvantage is that a lot of power is dissipated in the resistor.

For precise energy measurements  into the wire, do not include the resistor in the calculations, just the peak charge voltage  into the capacitor squared x capacitance /2

Quote from: ION on 2011.10.16, 17:14:20

What do I think is happening? Not sure but I have a theory.

If the free electrons have time to precess and align with a external magnetic field, the effect seems to occur.

When hit with repetitive pulses, they do not have time to precess to their rest position. The violence of movement is so high, I cannot account for it occurring via normal repulsion effects especially since it does not occur with single pulses of low repetition rate..

This could be the kick SM talked about but I will have to try it with a single wire to be rule out repulsion effects.

I will also try a wider pulse that equals the width of the burst.

I know I have been changing parameters, but it has taken me some time to identify the mechanisms and effects.

Please be patient. I know this is a bit confusing. More to come.

(Disclaimer: This is a toungue-in-cheak explanation of what I have come to believe.)

During the pulse, an incredible number of particles (virtual or real) are responding to the change, each effecting the ones near to itself.  So, for a brief instant, the entire local universe responds to a small input with a large output. 

Thanks ION no problem with the resistor, it should make life a lot easier to work out incoming and outgoing energy to the system from the reservoir cap, i cannot wait to see the + and - peaks across that series feed resistor, if i can get it working this time  O0

Almost built now, got the variac rigged in series with a  plug-in 40watt bulb so i can try different wattage bulbs, this then feeds my 240-24 18-240 transformers, then bridge then 2 x 470uF 450V in series smoothing caps, giving me 0-280V variable.

i have used a 1n4007 for the diode and a high quality film 1uF 1000V cap.

Zeners are 4 in series 16V 5 watt each, 21K series fed, 10K lin pot.

Just need to fit the zeners tomorrow and i should be up and running.

Not using a resistor at the moment still using my MOT.

Once i know i am up and running i will concentrate on finishing my new pulse transformer.

Circuit is now running.

Just taken some measurements of my bifilar, as i have the setup at home now and at work i was getting noise which i believed to be interfering with the LCR meters readings.

This time i have better results
0.1710 Ohms
7.8uH @ 10kHz
5.5uH @ 10kHz separated by fingers.

Using my 10K pot set to min frequency i was getting bifmin1 & bifmin2
using my 10K pot set to max i get a dim lighting of the 40watt bulb in series with the variac and get bifmax1 & bifmax2
I was still using my MOT for the inductance and not yet using a resistor, i have a 1uF film 1000V cap after the diode

Still not yet seeing any violent movement of the bifilar wire.

I am still yet to finish my new pulse transformer.

So bifmin is 4.2V so I=4.2/0.1710 = 24.56 Amps  :-[ @ 307Hz
& bifmax is 5.6V so I=5.6/0.1710 = 32.75 Amps  @ 1.75 kHz

I now think that something was scewing my LCR measurements at work, may have been the 20 or so high wattage CFL's i run in the gallery.

So it would appear it is now important for me to work out why my current is low, just checked and it looks like i have c3 @ 33nF so this maybe a bit low, i must try and find a few more higher voltage caps to drop into here, this cap must control the energy that's dumped into the primary of the pulse transformer.

Peterae:

The violent movement of the wires in my setup was caused by my SCR, an 800 Volt device being triggered into avalanche mode at around 1000 volts.

Where did this voltage come from since my power supply was set to a much lower voltage? It was identified as the peak voltage created by a normal trigger pulse shocking the inductor and 1.0 uf capacitor into a ringing condition.

The very first peak of the ringing cycle was over 1000 volts and  avalanched the SCR with a burst of pulses until the energy stored in the LC tank was reduced below avalanche threshold..

The signature of the pulses was the dead giveaway as they were neatly centered around the ringing peak and each pulse of the burst showed a mark to space ratio modulated by the rounded first peak of the ringing waveform.

I have since destroyed a few SCR's trying to get a continuous avalanche condition using just a higher voltage current limited power supply. Obviously the SCR's  I am using cannot withstand the severe avalanche duty. They were 400 and 800 volt devices. Fortunately I have a quantity of these on hand so could afford to waste a few.

During avalanche, current was 3X normal for the pulses into the wire as could be expected.

I have drawn this out in a timing diagram posted below. Waveforms are approximate, just trying to get the idea across.

V thr1 and V thr 2 represent two different values of power supply setting, V thr 2 taking the system closer to avalanche.

Hope this helps to understand the mechanism causing the violent excursions. Oddly I did not see this effect with continuous pulsing at high current avalanche mode. Nor did I see it at lower current levels sweeping through the same range of frequencies.

 I am inclined to believe a relaxation time is necessary in the wire, hence this is an interesting accidental discovery, and supports the notion "when current first flows in a wire, there is a kick". More research is certainly needed to prove or disprove this effect.

So if my understanding is correct, you are firing your Thyristor this is causing ringing in the choke, the first ring is of such a high voltage that it is causing a re-trigger of the thyristor, because the voltage is much higher the second re-trigger is 3 x the original current.

So is my first ring negative and opposite to your first ring being positive?

I can just feel the urge to have 2 thyristors firing with a variable delay between them, or a delay in one leg of the bifilar  :)

edit I have just located a 100nF HV cap so will try that when i get home for C3

QuoteI am inclined to believe a relaxation time is necessary in the wire, hence this is an interesting accidental discovery, and supports the notion "when current first flows in a wire, there is a kick". More research is certainly needed to prove or disprove this effect.

A delayed second pulse  :)

From Peterae:

QuoteSo if my understanding is correct, you are firing your Thyristor this is causing ringing in the choke, the first ring is of such a high voltage that it is causing a re-trigger of the thyristor, because the voltage is much higher the second re-trigger is 3 x the original current.

So is my first ring negative and opposite to your first ring being positive?

At the first pulse, it is the inability of the inductor to keep supplying current that causes a dip in the power supplied to the SCR. This is the perturbation that causes the ringing. The start of the ringing is from the negative as seen in your scope shot and my drawing. It must go positive and exceed the avalanche point of the SCR in order to get successive retriggers. Naturally this must occur on the positive ringing first peak.

I have not definitively found  out if a series of sharp kicks followed by a relaxation time is the only way to get the violent excursions. A precision burst pulse generator would seem to be in order. We can gate a transistor fed from an adjustable diac pulse generator. The gating could come from an external pulse generator.

Factors to investigate:

1) Required relaxation time (off time of the gating pulse)

2) Number of pulses required during the gating period.

3) Amplitude and duration of the pulses in the gating period.

4) On time of the gating period.

5) A precision way to measure the amplitude of wire vibration.

A lot on that plate, but as I say, worthy of research.

A lot of work there ION

I have now fitted the 100nF in place for C3.

2 waveforms as follows bifmin3 which is the pot set to minimun, and bifup1 which is when i turn the pot up slightly, the squareness of the waveform i guess is saturation of my core.

What i am seeing now is a linear separation of the bifilar wires as i turn the pot up and the frequency increases, the bifilar starts getting hot.

So bigmin3 4.8V I=4.8V/0.1710 = 28.07A
bifup1 14.8V I=86A

The first ring of the bad waveform is 17.6V = 103A

Wow that's quiet an increase in current when i turn the pot up and get the bad looking waveform.

QuoteAt the first pulse, it is the inability of the inductor to keep supplying current that causes a dip in the power supplied to the SCR. This is the perturbation that causes the ringing. The start of the ringing is from the negative as seen in your scope shot and my drawing. It must go positive and exceed the avalanche point of the SCR in order to get successive re-triggers. Naturally this must occur on the positive ringing first peak.

Thankyou for explaining this to me.

Interestingly the Avalanche voltage can be controlled by biasing the gate with a dc voltage

Do SCR's have a secondary avalanche mode that increases current like transistors do?  (they are destroyed if the current is too high)

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.01, 20:42:18
Do SCR's have a secondary avalanche mode that increases current like transistors do?  (they are destroyed if the current is too high)

I have not studied this in any depth so cannot answer your question.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.01, 19:38:27
Thankyou for explaining this to me.

Interestingly the Avalanche voltage can be controlled by biasing the gate with a dc voltage

I have not tried this so cannot comment. Usually the SCR will triggrer on when the gate exceeds the cathode by  around 0.5 to 0.6 volts. I have not applied a bias to see if the avalanche can be controlled.

The specs for most SCR's specify a gate pulse risetime and gate hold current to sustain turn-on.

Also there is the minimum holding current required to latch the SCR "on". All of these parameters vary depending on the size and current carrying capacity of the SCR.

OK got the new coil wound, 210 turns primary, 10 turns secondary.
you can see the core i used here click specification to see it's dimensions, it's part code is HEM3016 the bottom one big ring
http://www.maplin.co.uk/ferrite-rings-and-beads-32792

I cannot explain the waveform, mostly due to core saturation i guess, anyway i certainly have secondary current now  C.C

weird how the ringing is at the start of conduction  C.C

anyway i now have 38V on the secondary and i make that I=38/0.171 = 222Amps  :)

I have had latch up once as well, the bulb works well thanks ION that's one Thyristor saved.

I am still not getting movement of the bifilar though, i have seen some strange oscillation burst a couple of times but have not worked out how to get them to appear, i was playing with core saturation with neo's on the toroidal core at the time, i was getting port corruption as well on my laptop and DSO at the time so it may have just been some bogus data.

I must bring my HV probes home and see whats happening on the primary side, don't want to risk a x10 probe on there as i don't know what to expect right now and could blow a Chan if it's high.

Check to see if your core is getting warm. Not sure that these energy absorbing ferrites are the best for the job. This may account for the strange waveform. You want a ferrite that has good transformer characteristics, which a CMC does.

As I said, I was using a large CMC from, a video monitor power supply,  which had a center hole large enough to pass ten turns of 18 Gauge.

I would not say the core was that hot, it's been good to wind a few from scratch, but i will hunt for a cmc, i have a couple of duff PC psu's which i have been meaning to dismantle.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.02, 20:15:01

anyway i now have 38V on the secondary and i make that I=38/0.171 = 222Amps  :)

222 amps?

Well i have a 38V pulse going into a non inductive wire which measures 0.171 Ohms, so yes 222.22Amps unless i am missing something?

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.03, 13:08:52
Well i have a 38V pulse going into a non inductive wire which measures 0.171 Ohms, so yes 222.22Amps unless i am missing something?

How can a wire that small carry 222 amps?  (That's 8436 watts.)  Isn't the current applied limited by the supply?

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.03, 13:30:27
How can a wire that small carry 222 amps?  (That's 8436 watts.)  Isn't the current applied limited by the supply?

G:

The actual power is delivered for a microsecond or so. It is not continuous power or the wire would explode. You need to consider duty cycle.

That's the whole purpose of this exercise. The original intent was to develop a sharp pulse (high amps, low duty cycle) to the wire to attempt to get vibration with an actual very low average power input.

The wire can take it because the average power is very low.

We are working backwards from the TPU reported vibration . How could this vibration occur with such low power input?

So we try to produce vibration using this method and see what else falls out of the exercise.

At least that's what I had in mind.

The current in the wire does not flow instantly.  It has to soak into the wire to gradually get the electrons moving.

What is going on "outside the wire"? 

"DIFFUSION OF CURRENT INTO CONDUCTORS"

J.Edwards and T.K Saha

Currents are established on the surface of conductors by the propagation of electromagnetic waves
in the insulating material between them. If the load is less than the characteristic impedance of the
insulating material of the line, multiple reflections and retransmissions eventually build up the line
current to that required by the load. The currents are initially established on the surface of the
conductors before diffusing relatively slowly into the interior and gives rise to the skin effect. The
diffusion velocity depends the conductivity, permeability, thickness of the conductor, and the
frequency of the excitation, and such effects of the diffusion process are difficult to conceptually
appreciate. Fortunately, the diffusion of heat into solids is very similar, and will be used as an
analogy to aid understanding. This diffusion is the means whereby current moves into conductors
and flux into of magnetic cores.

(see attached)

I posit that our small wire can carry 222 amps because very little of this current is in the conductor itself. 

How can the rest of this current be outside the conductor?

Latency in absorbtion equates to high resistance of permiability level. A higher speed energy skips across the surface. What is the energy called that exhibits between the skipping and absorption and how can this interaction be used?
At a slower level using the established magnetic waves this looks similar to Don Smith's AC charging pump in reverse of the direction of DC of the supply line.

I found a whole bunch of heavy gauge toroid's in this PC psu, there was a toroidal inductor and a cmc, but the wire gauge is very thick, maybe twice the thickness i have used up until now, anyway i put 10 turns on the secondary, not sure how many primary turns are already there, it's not possible to count them.

Anyway end result was not good, my thyristor was latching on at quiet a low variac voltage, sometimes if i wind up the variac very slowly i could get all the way up.

So i am still looking at this time for a suitable cmc, still one more pc psu yet, this maybe a lower power one hopefully

Here's a scope shot of the primary and secondary waves when i managed to wind the psu right up

You can see my setup in the pictures below and some of the toroid's i have built and test (front row) and others i have found in the 2 psu's, you can see the chunky one soldered to my pcb that i have just tested.

The coils in the front row have been tested from right to left, so the last one that gave the weird waveform was the black one front left, this showed the most current so far.

Going to test one of these cmc's i got out of the second psu, not sure how many turns it has, but i would say less than a 100.

OK just tried one of the smaller gauge cmc's i pulled from the second psu, there 2 lots of 28turns, so i put these in series and wound 10 turns with a 5 turn tap for the secondary.

On power up it would run but the thyristor would latch at a relatively low voltage, but something very strange happening which i am quiet excited about, i am scoping primary and secondary, when it latches up sometimes when i switch off the power supply i get 4 or 5 bursts on the secondary of about +/- 10V pulses, but nothing on the primary, how weird is that, i say i am excited about this, i guess it could be noise causing spurious data in the dso, but i have seen these +/- pulses before  >:-) and they were a lot harder to get to appear and then not in an orderly fashion

I have stopped testing for the night, i don't want to disturb anything until i bring my camera home so i can film the pulses to see what everyone thinks, i will also bring my non PC based scope home to confirm this see's them.

So how can i have high current pulses, when the primary shows no drive and remember this happens when i power off the latch up condition by switching the psu off.

EDIT thinking about this, it cannot be noise on the dso because i am only seeing the spikes on the Chan that's connected to the secondary, i am getting really excited about this.  ^-^

During latch up i monitor the voltage coming out my psu and it only reads about 10-18V this is being pulled down by the latched on thyristor, i think it was 10-18V maybe it was lower, i will check this again when i get my camera

If your pulse duration is in the single millisecond range they may be relaxation. (As the term is used in SIGINT and ELINT.)

These are normally the same polarity as the driving pulse. Your notes about the display of the polarity changing as you move your scope probe away from the wire are also an indication of this.

'Relaxation' pulses are NOT street electronics terminology.

To get these pulses before, i made use of the random re-triggering of my 2 delayed fet stages, this was hit and miss and mostly blew the fets. i then realized it was the mixing of harmonics that creates them, but what harmonics, so this led me to mix 2 whitenoise channels in a bifilar which was wound round an iron loop, this iron loop would once in a while show the same pulses i am seeing, these pulses were also high current in nature, but i was still non the wiser on how to create them with regard to the harmonics required, when done correctly i suspect a very little drive is required to create them, and i am wondering if this is what i am seeing here.

G:
Whether the current is on the outside surface (skin)  or has penetrated deep into the conductor, the heating effect is in line with the average power sent into the wire.

If the current somehow flowed outside of the wire, the wire itself would not heat up. (Moray)

222 amps into a 0.17 ohm load for one microsecond is not a lot of average power. We need to look at pulse amplitude, pulse duration and repetition rate to determine average power.

Peterae:

Perhaps some stored energy in your inductor is discharged with a few final pulses as the SCR unlatches at some low holding current value.

Indeed ION infact the switch i switch off is feeding the bridge from my 2 back to back mains transformers, so when i switch off under latch up there will be a small amount of arcing and harmonics injected as the system winds down, more interestingly is that i do not see anything notable on the primary, so then how am i getting 10V positive/negative pulses on the secondary.

I should be containing myself  C.C because there maybe a simple answer, i will do more tomorrow to try and work out what's going on but first i want to film this and see what you all think.

First problem that comes to mind is that the secondary is not isolated from the primary because both scope probes are connected to both and the neg of each scope probe will be connected together, but connecting 1 wire of the secondary to 1 wire of the primary should not cause pulses on the secondary right because the second pin of the secondary is showing the potential, so all i am doing is referencing the secondary and bifilar to the 0v on the primary.

So one test i need to establish tomorrow is to remove the primary scope probe and see if i still see the pulses.

Quote from: ION on 2011.11.03, 20:57:10
G:
Whether the current is on the outside surface (skin)  or has penetrated deep into the conductor, the heating effect is in line with the average power sent into the wire.

If the current somehow flowed outside of the wire, the wire itself would not heat up. (Moray)

A disuptive dicharge coil makes the spark gap hot enough to melt tungsten.  There is not enough current in the disruptive coil supply to do this, regardless of the average or peak power, so what causes this extreme heating effect?

Quote from: ION on 2011.11.03, 20:57:10

222 amps into a 0.17 ohm load for one microsecond is not a lot of average power. We need to look at pulse amplitude, pulse duration and repetition rate to determine average power.

Pavg = Ppk x pulse width x pulse repetition frequency

What is the average power for this example?

G The pulse averaged i would say 5uS or less width and although i didn't measure the operating repetitive frequency i can be pretty sure it was between 350-400Hz

So at 350 times a second we would have 222A for 0.00175 of a second.

V=IxR = 37.962

0.00175 / 8427.56Watts = 0.246 Joules

or is it

P=IxV = 8427.56Watts x 0.00175  = 14.748 Joules

I have:

Pavg = 8430 watts x .000005 s x 400 Hz = 16.87 watts

Joules = watts x s

8430 watts x .000005 s = .04215 J

Well, even if grossly "off", it is not a lot of power, so like Ion asked, why are the wires moving so?

Where is all of that momentum coming from?

There's a calculator here
http://www.vishay.com/resistors/pulse-energy-calculator/

So each pulse has 0.0421 J of energy if the pulse was 5uS wide

If we were running at 350Hz then we would have 350 x 0.0421 = 14.7483 Watts

Here's a thought, i don't know what i am on about so please put me right.

How can i see a pulse on my secondary and not on my primary.

to measure a pulse across my primary i need a potential difference at each end of the winding, what if i don't have this, maybe a sharp pulse that does not allow me to have a potential across my primary, can i have a transfer of energy to the secondary without a potential showing across each end of the primary, how about a longitudinal wave, would my scope show this.

Is it possible for my high turn primary and low turn secondary to convert a narrow voltage pulse into a wide current pulse.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.04, 09:19:10
Here's a thought, i don't know what i am on about so please put me right.

How can i see a pulse on my secondary and not on my primary.

to measure a pulse across my primary i need a potential difference at each end of the winding, what if i don't have this, maybe a sharp pulse that does not allow me to have a potential across my primary, can i have a transfer of energy to the secondary without a potential showing across each end of the primary, how about a longitudinal wave, would my scope show this.

Is it possible for my high turn primary and low turn secondary to convert a narrow voltage pulse into a wide current pulse.

In normal transformer mode, a change in current dI dT in the primary produces a  current in the secondary. In this mode, the pulse width should be the same as the primary and the pulses should align timewise. In your case with a stepdown transformer, the voltage on the secondary is reduced but current is increased. This is usually referred to as "forward mode"

If a transformer were used in "flyback mode", with energy stored in the transformer then released, you can expect a pulse in the secondary whose width is dependent on the load impedance. These pulses are not aligned timewise, as it is a two step process:energy storage, energy release.

hope this helps

Yep i understand both of those principles but they both require a potential between both ends of the primary.

Here's something that i can link to this, a month or so ago i did a test using a small audio matching transformer, it was something like 1.2K primary and 1.2Ohm secondary.

I was driving the primary using a sinewave gen, the secondary was loaded with a low ohm resistor, i was sweeping up and down and monitoring the current and voltage phases, when i was using a really low ohm resistor cannot remember now if it was 1 or 10 Ohm, i could see that there was a very small amount of noise riding on the sinewave that was driving the primary, on the secondary this noise was the same amplitude despite the sine going through a large stepdown, i could hardly see the sine waveform on the secondary but because the volts/div were cranked down i could clearly see the noise i had on the primary but much larger because of the v/div, this noise was not stepped down as the driven sine was.

I found that interesting, it did occur to me that the noise may be originating in my scope leads or scope, i tried both scopes i have and could get the same result.


It's also a bit like the inductance measurements i took at work and could not get an accurate reading because when i scoped the bifilar i had 6kHz pulses.

I have been wondering if EM noise is radiant in nature, to stop EM noise on a PCB you put in a ground plane with various connections through to different points, Tesla said would charge a metal plate, and then we can have 1 cm of track with a large spike measured across that 1 cm track, is this not what Tesla did with his large u shaped copper bar with a lit bulb across each end of the copper bar.

Sorry for firing all this stuff at you ION, you are a theoretical and practical guy and don't expect you to answer any of the above, just want to get my thoughts out so you can see how i am thinking in the hope it may trigger someone to look at something slightly differently.

So next up i need to do some more tests as soon as i can.

Quote from: ION on 2011.10.16, 17:14:20

If the free electrons have time to precess and align with a external magnetic field, the effect seems to occur.

What if an external magnetic field is applied to align them all the time?

You know, electrons have a "cloud" of "virtual particles" around them that communicates with the rest of the universe.  These vp's can move back and forth the transfer momentum or they can break free and move away without being pulled back.  So, potentially, you can excite electrons into projecting momentum while never exhausting themselves.

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.04, 13:35:48
What if an external magnetic field is applied to align them all the time?

You know, electrons have a "cloud" of "virtual particles" around them that communicates with the rest of the universe.  These vp's can move back and forth the transfer momentum or they can break free and move away without being pulled back.  So, potentially, you can excite electrons into projecting momentum while never exhausting themselves.

These are tests we need to perform. SM spoke of nulling the external magnetic field. Whether he actually aligned the electrons is to be determined.

The "kick" might be the mechanical reaction of the wire when the electrons are first tugged out of alignment with the earth magnetic field. It would seem they would then become circularly polarized around the wire due to current flow. An external compass seems to indicate this.

The experiment needs to be run with a single wire rather than bifilar to eliminate repulsion effects.

Then we need to determine if there is a relaxation time constant, when current is interrupted. Is this the mechanism behind inductance?

Quote from: ION on 2011.11.04, 14:58:19
These are tests we need to perform. SM spoke of nulling the external magnetic field. Whether he actually aligned the electrons is to be determined.

The "kick" might be the mechanical reaction of the wire when the electrons are first tugged out of alignment with the earth magnetic field. It would seem they would then become circularly polarized around the wire due to current flow. An external compass seems to indicate this.

The experiment needs to be run with a single wire rather than bifilar to eliminate repulsion effects.

Then we need to determine if there is a relaxation time constant, when current is interrupted. Is this the mechanism behind inductance?

If the "kick" were the mechanical reaction, SM would not have gotten thousands of them per second.

A compass is metal and therefore will react to an electric field as well as a magnetic field.  They will conduct HV too.   When electrons are first disturbed, they have to let the universe know.

Yes, look for a relaxation time.

Inductance is a transfer of momentum.   When a magnet or magnetic field moves or changes, the momentum carriers move, momentum is transferred, and electrons drift.

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.04, 17:16:25
If the "kick" were the mechanical reaction, SM would not have gotten thousands of them per second.

I guess, if he did want us to think , it is necessary to create thousands of current kick per second, he would definitely talk about rectifiers, and perfect sine waves in the letters.  ^-^

Quote from: Chef on 2011.11.04, 23:29:06
I guess, if he did want us to think , it is necessary to create thousands of current kick per second, he would definitely talk about rectifiers, and perfect sine waves in the letters.  ^-^

From the Master of Magnetics:

QuoteIn regard to your query about the pulse DC conversion and the potential use of the coil to provide motive force:

The multiple frequencies traveling around the coils are of too high a frequency to provide for any motive effort. They are only a means to achieve an end. The multiple frequencies begin to feed themselves and the multiple kicks become a combined big kick.

I call it resonating. That is why if you notice in the video tapes that it takes just a few seconds for the coil to begin to function at maximum effort. You see, one little kick amounts to nothing. However imagine if you had hundreds of thousands of little kicks combining into one big current kick . . .

QuoteThe multiple frequencies traveling around the coils are of too high a frequency to provide for any motive effort. They are only a means to achieve an end. The multiple frequencies begin to feed themselves and the multiple kicks become a combined big kick.

The following is from the Gnostik forum and the edits are very interesting:

QuoteAlso, there is another interesting analogy. We seem to overlook so many things in our society. They are right in our faces but we just look around them without interest at all. When I began to study the effects of multiple frequencies combined together I found out that when you deliberately strive to create the worst case scenario of frequencies (is he talking about superposition of frequencies? or creating noise? Superposition is horrible in some applications, like communications, to be avoided at all costs) you start to get some very measurable kicks. In themselves they are not much. But if you make enough of them fast sendoff, you get a collectible power spike that is more then the power available to begin with. The destructive heating caused by the eddy currents become the problem we face when we
make a really large powerful coil. (eddy currents are caused by radiant discharges created from proton/electron precession, this is how metal detectors work, by inducing precession, and also magnetometers, interestingly enough)
Now you understand more about the heating problem and why using a fan does not work. (Submersion cooling in a cooled non conductive oil might though, the device obviously creates enough power to cool itself)
I must go for now. I am sure I am hitting a lot of bad keys here but I am short for time and I am not going to  anal=  timwhebyireoda ritten. So please excuse my mistakes.

More from SM:

QuoteIf you  analin Morgan Jones bana, Valve Amplifiers, 3rd edition, on page 262 he says, The inrush of current through the filament interacts with the earth's magnetic field to produce a small kick.

SMALL KICK. Those words mean a great deal. It PROVES that there is an interaction between the magnetic field of the earth and simple electrons running through wires. It may be a small influence but it is actual OVER UNITY.byireodaspent several years of my life thinking about that.

Scientists tell us that =  tiunity is impossible. They say that you cannot get more out of something then you put into it.

Then I think about that wire with the small kick when first turned on. . .

Therein lies the secret my friend.

This one is really good:

QuoteI told you that the simplest form of =  tiunity is a piece of wire and a voltage source. Anyone can actually connect it and measure. See for yourself the kick. NO coil no xmrs, just a kick. That should tell you  earned gentlemen that there exists a form of energy convertible and useable which is directly related to a simple piece of wire and instantaneous electron flow.. (rapidly repeated instantaneous electron flow)No one appears to be willing to get off their asses and do anything except ask and demand more information before they will start to experiment.

He makes a very interesting point that every piece of wire is OU when first turned on.  O0

I forgot to bring my second scope home last night but did remember my camera  :) anyway here's a video.
All i am doing is switching on and off the power supply.

The voltage is set to 142V unloaded using the variac, this is just enough to give me one working cycle of the thyristor before it latches on.

So i am cycling the switch on and off, each time i turn on you can see 1 cycle, sometimes when i switch off you can see high current pulses on my secondary but nothing on my primary.

The green channel is Chan 1 and this is connected across the secondary, the yellow Chan is 2 and connected across my primary.
It's worth noting that my secondary is across my non inductive bifilar which is 0.171 Ohms so for every 5 volt div on the scope we are seeing 29.3 Amps, some of these pulses are +/- 60 amps or more

Chan1 is 5V/div Chan 2 is 100V/div and the timebase is set to 10uS/div

At first i concentrate on the scope screen, towards the end i focus on the bulb the switch and the scope so you can see how it all fits together.

The important point here is that i am not seeing a large primary voltage spike to cause the large secondary current pulses.

Actually having reviewed the video you can see a very little pulse on the primary occasionally when the pulses appear on the secondary.

Good news i can disconnect the primary scope probe and still get the same pulses on the secondary, this at least isolates the earth scope clips and disconnects the primary 0V to the secondary, so in this video i do not have the Chan 2 connected to the primary, and only have the secondary Chan connected to the scope.

I have done another video here, but switching on and off as fast as i can, interestingly sometimes the thyristor drives the secondary with a larger amplitude, also worth noting is when i first switch on i can here the bifilar clang together, i could hear this in both videos.

You can see that Chan 2 that is laid on the bench near the bifilar is picking up big spikes at the same time, this is still set to 100V/div although the probe is open circuit and not connected to anything.

A test i need to perform is to replace the bifilar with a 0.2 Ohm resistor and see if the pulses disappear.

If you ask me i think it's radiant in nature and shows electrostatic qualities as a result of negative induction resulting from fast switching transitions exceeding the local inductors self resonant frequency.
but what do i know  ;D

Quote from: Chef on 2011.11.04, 23:29:06
I guess, if he did want us to think , it is necessary to create thousands of current kick per second, he would definitely talk about rectifiers, and perfect sine waves in the letters.  ^-^

Could you expand or clarify what exactly you are getting at with this statement.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.05, 13:43:42
A test i need to perform is to replace the bifilar with a 0.2 Ohm resistor and see if the pulses disappear.

If you ask me i think it's radiant in nature and shows electrostatic qualities as a result of negative induction resulting from fast switching transitions exceeding the local inductors self resonant frequency.
but what do i know  ;D

Those pulses appear to be avalanche mode triggering from something that is charged up  or a resonant condition producing voltage higher than your power supply setting.

Could you supply a schematic? How close is it to what I have suggested in the rev3 schematic?

I have substituted a 0.1 ohm resistor in my setup and the pulses are still there. Which means they have nothing to do with the bifilar, however with the bifilar a little bit of inductance when the wires separate seems to make it happen more often.

Now lets not forget i have no primary pulse to cause the secondary pulse across the bifilar or none in the sense of normal transformer operation.

The circuit is exactly as you have drawn, the only difference is i am using 2 mains transformers back to back for isolation and to provide a slight step down in final voltage. I will try to draw the circuit up later tonight. I am currently using a 100Watt bulb in series with the variac.

When the Thyristor locks up i have little voltage across my power supply, hence the 100 watt bulb is taking the load current, but when i switch off i would have no rebound of supply voltage because the switch disconnects the supply, so any energy in the system cannot be stored anywhere from what i can see, the only thing that can happen is a brief amount of switching transitions occur when i switch off this would be the only energy entering the system at this point.

So maybe i need to scope across the A-K of the thyristor to see if there is any possibility of Avalance, if there is i don't see how unless there's still energy in the MOT Choke

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.05, 13:51:43
Now lets not forget i have no primary pulse to cause the secondary pulse across the bifilar or non in the sense of normal transformer operation.

The circuit is exactly as you have drawn, the only difference is i am using 2 mains transformers back to back for isolation and to provide a slight step down in final voltage. I will try to draw the circuit up later tonight. I am currently using a 100Watt bulb in series with the variac.

When the Thyristor locks up little voltage across my power supply, hence the 100 watt bulb is taking the load current, but when i switch off i would have no rebound of supply voltage because the switch disconnects the supply, so any energy in the system cannot be stored anywhere from what i can see, the only thing that can happen is a brief amount of switching transitions occur when i switch off this would be the only energy entering the system at this point.

There is energy stored in the choke as it is in the direct path for the current to flow, especially so when the SCR has latched on. When the supply is switched off the choke releases the energy as back emf and rings with the 1.0 uf capacitor. If you scope the voltage across the 1.0 uf you will see the ringing when the supply is switched off. Be careful, the peak can be up to 1000 V depending on the avalanche breakdown of your SCR. That's why the trigger pulse is not needed.

Be sure to use your 100X probes.

Right i see, OK that will be the next test when i get home Thanks ION, any idea why we see the pulse on the secondary and not on the primary.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.05, 14:08:07
Right i see, OK that will be the next test when i get home Thanks ION any idea why we see the pulse on the secondary and not on the primary.

Not sure how your scope works, but the triggering would have to be set on the primary pulse. On older analog scopes, chopped mode is used for dual trace high speed work. "Alternate" mode will miss the timing concurrence.

I'm beginning to lose faith in the capacitor discharge SCR method, although it is robust and can deliver healthy pulses of known energy, what we need is a more controlled way of generating  the pulses and the relaxation time.

Perhaps the SCR method can be salvaged by using higher current, higher voltage devices in order to generate the brief  pulses to kick the electrons, not trying to rely on avalanche, and gating the normal pulse generator diac with a NPN transistor to ground (across the 0.1 uf). This gating signal to the transistor can come from an external signal generator or 555 timer.

It seems there is a current threshold below which the vigorous wire movement does not occur.

Too much to try, too little time

Normally when the Chan that is set for trigger in this case Chan 1 secondary, the scope triggers both channel's to lock at the same time.
So we should be seeing a pulse on both at the same time, it clearly does this for the first cycle of the Thyristor before latch up.

I can try setting the triggering for Chan 2 the primary but doubt this will alter much apart from if i really have no pulse we wont see the pulse on the secondary, i will try this anyway.

QuoteToo much to try, too little time

No rush, it's very interesting, one design is almost certainly going to lead to other designs, this does not frustrate me, the hardest part is getting motivated to put the time in, which is not easy with the way normal life takes us these days, if we look back a 100 years how rare must it have been for someone to spend spare time and spare money building things, most were lucky to feed themselves, the ability to have time for a hobby would infer real wealth  :)

I think the reason that i am not seeing violent movement is because the energy in my pulse is spread over too long a time period.
I seem to get the wires clinging to each other or trying to linearly push each other apart.

Because of the latch up i am getting, i think all i need to do is wind a bit more on the primary to stop this.

Anyway i would like to clear up whats happening right now before moving on.  O0

So things to do

Scope across 1uF film cap with x100 probe.
Trigger on primary
Scope A-K of thyristor
Maybe replace the bifilar with a 0.2 resistance and see what i have.

I think my next round of experiments will be with this modified circuit, where I can set the gated burst and number of pulses in the burst.

It has a few advantages in that we are stressing the SCR less, and during the relaxation period, the power supply can rise to a higher voltage, plus we can precisely set the number of diac induced pulses within the gating period.

Also it does not rely on the avalanche effect of the SCR and unpredictable ringing of the choke.

Looks great ION, So this can control the trigger, wow i could hook up my controller to drive 2 of these circuits, this is a great development.
The thyristor is so much more robust than the fets i was using previously.

First test
Chan 1 across bifilar
Chan 2 across 1uF film Capacitor set to 50V/Div not much happening here although the are some pulses.

Second Test
Chan1 across secondary
Chan2 across MOT choke with neg clip on film cap side of choke, positive scope clip on C3 side, 100V/Div

Third Test
Chan 1 across secondary
Chan 2 across A/K of thyristor 100V/Div

Fourth Test
Triggering on the primary while scope both primary and secondary.

Well this was interesting.
First video was same timebase setting as all the other videos.
Chan1 Secondary
Chan 2 Primary using this Chan to trigger from, timebase set to 10uS

Second video was the same with the timebase wound up, now they show up on the primary  :'( Timebase is set to 20ms

OK so triggering on the primary does indeed seem to show the pulses on the primary.

Sorry for wasting everyones time :-\ also this x100 probe seems to show the pulses slightly better as well
I still cannot work out why triggering and the secondary does not show the pulses as both Chan 1 and Chan2 should be sampled at the same time from the same trigger point, at least that's what has always happened

Actually that last 2 videos were sabotaged by my Mrs, she wrecked the back end of my bifilar, i had not realized the bifilar was no longer together and tight at the back end behind me.

Anyway i have tried both scopes now, and from what i can see i can still trigger from the primary and get pulses on the secondary and not on the primary, but from what i can see they are very rare.
I need to re run the experiment with triggering on secondary vs triggering on primary, there still something not right going on here.

I know for a fact that it should not matter if i trigger from Chan1 or Chan2, when using the scope for digital analysis it does not matter and it should be the same when doing ac wave analysis, both channels are sampled at the same time from the triggering channel.

Peterae

Please be extra careful with your scope and ground connections. I've been using an old TEK analog scope that is repairable. I would feel very bad if you lost your nice DSO.

There can be sneak ground paths and capacitive coupling that can destroy things. I hope your scope has sufficient mains isolation.

Thanks for the warning ION, i am quiet carefull when connecting equipment.

Quote from: ION on 2011.11.05, 13:44:56
Could you expand or clarify what exactly you are getting at with this statement.

QuoteIf the "kick" were the mechanical reaction, SM would not have gotten thousands of them per second.

That was just my reaction to Grumpy's quoted  statement. If the "kick" is mechanical reaction or not, SM stated many times, the kick is there when the electrons start to flow, and with sine waves and rectifiers we can create this condition easily thousands times per second.

Quote from: Chef on 2011.11.07, 01:24:17
That was just my reaction to Grumpy's quoted  statement. If the "kick" is mechanical reaction or not, SM stated many times, the kick is there when the electrons start to flow, and with sine waves and rectifiers we can create this condition easily thousands times per second.

I think that there is a little more to it than just starting and stopping electrons.

What does wire motion have to do with electricity?  Is the violent motion of the wires indicative of the permeability of space changing, like it is expanding and contracting?

What happens in an electrical circuit, just after the circuit is completed but before current starts to flow?

This may or may not relate to this G i don't think anyone has ever really commented on this effect i had.

The very spooky and strange noises my electret microphone picked up maybe an indication.

It was like twanging the wire and then twanging again and when the time between the two twangs was altered so did the sound that was produced, strange thing was the noise was not audible by ear only by electret microphone.

The pulse timing was obviously altering something in the space around the bench, the microphone was not always that close, the electret also picked up the crackling i had, so much so it would drown out me speaking even when the crackling had low audible volume.


So the question is how can a condenser microphone pick up noise that's not audible, could it be an electrostatic gradient in the space around my test bench, or maybe an effect that changes the properties of a dielectric, is there anything else that could do that.


http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=279.0

Can you show the explosions on a scope?
I ask because the noise on the scope does not compare to the loudness of the kick / snap we hear.
I see how could the explosion repetition is increased with the added magnet.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.08, 16:53:23
This may or may not relate to this G i don't think anyone has ever really commented on this effect i had.

The very spooky and strange noises my electret microphone picked up maybe an indication.

It was like twanging the wire and then twanging again and when the time between the two twangs was altered so did the sound that was produced, strange thing was the noise was not audible by ear only by electret microphone.

The pulse timing was obviously altering something in the space around the bench, the microphone was not always that close, the electret also picked up the crackling i had, so much so it would drown out me speaking even when the crackling had low audible volume.


So the question is how can a condenser microphone pick up noise that's not audible, could it be an electrostatic gradient in the space around my test bench, or maybe an effect that changes the properties of a dielectric, is there anything else that could do that.


http://www.overunityresearch.com/index.php?topic=279.0

I am reluctant to blurt out the "cause" as no one will believe it.  You may recall that I had incredibly loud bangs like youself.  They sounded like a rifle shot.  Curiously enough, a small plate of 0.250 inch polyethylene placed between the terminals of my HV transformer (where the noise was) stopped them.  My initial thought is that this dielectric had prevented some invisible discharge from occuring, though this discharge only made noise and no sound.  Later I learned that polyethylene blocks torsion wave propagation.

You may also recall the loud crack sounds that Spherics reported - sound with no flash.  All the same thing: The pressure (which is also called "energy density", by the way) exceeds a certain threshold and it discharges and creates sounds waves in air.

Electret mikes are very sensitive to changes in the charge density they reside in. The same principle is used in part presence, static charge and other sensors.

As for the apparent stretching of recorded noise... I can only guess it has something to do with the electrostrictive properties of the microphone element changing as ambient charge changes.
These ideas would cover the fact that the recorded explosions are much louder on the recording than what you heard.

I would say that is a good guess.

I've heard your microphone sounds between the pulses. It sounds like it is picking up conversations of the dead  :D

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.08, 21:17:00
I am reluctant to blurt out the "cause" as no one will believe it.  You may recall that I had incredibly loud bangs like youself. 

I, for one, would believe. We're not talking elfin magic here either. :o
Blurt it out and let the believers stand in awe while the non believers shake and fall.

Check please the attached picture!

You see a rectifier,which converting the primary side AC to DC with a full wave rectifier tube, and charging the output smoothing capacitor. Depending on the frequency of the sine wave, and on the capacitor size, it will take a a certain amount of time to fully charge the capacitor. In that certain amount of time,the energy from the primary side, will be transferred to the capacitor (minus the circuit losses),so there will be a pulsating DC current flowing in the flexible wire until the condenser fully charged.

My question is, in this case, if we put a strong external magnetic field near the flexible wire (which will cause movement in the wire if the current is flowing),and switch on the rectifier for that certain amount of time again, until the capacitor is fully charged, should we except more losses in the energy transfer as in the first case, when there was no magnet there? If yes, how could we calculate this additional loss?

Chef:
I'v tried several ways to alter current in a circuit with a static magnet and none of them had an observable effect.


GK:
Aether (or orgone, virtual particles, spin centers, etc.) supposedly discharges when it s too dense in an area.

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.08, 22:50:10
Chef:
I'v tried several ways to alter current in a circuit with a static magnet and none of them had an observable effect.

Strange! You could easily create an observable effect, hence the inductance of the transformer windings change when you attach a magnet to the core, which in AC applications does matter. (2*pi*f*L)

Anyway what do you think about the question relating to rectifier losses? Is there more loss, or not, with the magnet in place?

@Grumpy,
If it is just us two then so be it. The rest will catch up. The Aether is the final step of discovery.
Wilhelm Reich got the same treatment as Tesla. Go figure. I am not going down that road.

For the rest: Either progress or weep. But you will inevitably come around. All the different approaches using devices or configurations point to this process.

Quote from: giantkiller on 2011.11.08, 21:01:08
Can you show the explosions on a scope?
I ask because the noise on the scope does not compare to the loudness of the kick / snap we hear.
I see how could the explosion repetition is increased with the added magnet.

I could not scope the crackle, the question i kept asking myself was how can the noise on the scope create a crackle, was it a harmonic sequence, was it a matter of striking the right Cord, as soon as this question is answered then we have our solution, we would be able to create the kick as we want.

G is was driving my circuits with low mA and at 35V there was no reason to start getting 50kV pops, anyway i spent years on tv's i know the difference between a HV discharge and what i was seeing, i could touch any part of the circuit and still be alive.

WW

QuoteI've heard your microphone sounds between the pulses. It sounds like it is picking up conversations of the dead  Cheesy

Indeed  ;D i wish i had run a test where i could see how far away they were heard.

I found that a small inductance in the supply side of the pulsing wire helped to create the kick, i found this because i was getting better results when i placed a mA moving iron meter in series with each coil of bifilar.

I really must go through all my videos again because i still have not uploaded all of them.

The problem i always had was within a short period my fet's would short.

This is why i am finding ION's work so important, not only do i feel it's related but he knows what he is doing  C.C

Quote from: Chef on 2011.11.08, 23:12:44
Strange! You could easily create an observable effect, hence the inductance of the transformer windings change when you attach a magnet to the core, which in AC applications does matter. (2*pi*f*L)

Anyway what do you think about the question relating to rectifier losses? Is there more loss, or not, with the magnet in place?

The magnet is static, so I don't see how it could cause a change at all.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.09, 09:25:29
G is was driving my circuits with low mA and at 35V there was no reason to start getting 50kV pops, anyway i spent years on tv's i know the difference between a HV discharge and what i was seeing, i could touch any part of the circuit and still be alive.

I didn't say that it was a HV discharge.  It is a pressure discharge.  Like a bubble popping.  I never got the explosion when humidity was very low.

Popping is interesting but doesn't mean you got everything right and have a generator.

Ion shorted transistors too, but he wrote about a fix he used a few posts back.  I have shorted three power supplies (the regulating transistors in them), one of which caught fire, and I shorted 18 transistors of a stack of 22 avalanche transistors.

I am trying to understand how all the seemingly disconnected events are related and making some progress.  I believe that electric current is a side effect of the medium moving along a conductor.  The medium moves slowly and drags the ions like advection in fluid mechanics (when particles or another substance is carried by a fluid).  The medium moves by diffusion also and will move from low pressure to high pressure, but I am not sure this is always the rule.  Convection current is the sum of diffusion and advection currents, by the way.  So, cold current is the flow of the medium itself and it does not necessarily drag electrons (or ions) with it.  Moving medium transfers momentum (I believe through it's inherent torsion/spin properties, so no "work" is required).

I found a little circuit for an "orgone detector" that I hope will indicate cold current flow.  It uses a small capacitor as a probe and the capacitance changes when your in the "river".  I attached it below, in case it may indicate if there is a flow in this bifilar experiment, and I am confident that there is.

Edit:
There are several similarities between orgone accumulators and Joe Cells, and Perported OU devices.

@Grumpy,
In regards to the low humidity I noticed something interesting in the video I posted.
All of the blue haze has to do with ionization of humidty. We see the blue when we observe from a distance but not when in it.
Sonoluminescence at a micro scale. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence)

At a huge scale it would be lightning. So as we build detectors to see this effect we can take notice of the NASA videos where the extraterrestrial craft navigate above lightning strikes. They are obviously interacting with the process. I can see this as magnetic, Orgone absorbtion.

What is also interesting is the purple streamers are considered Radiant Engery whereas the Bluish white is consider Orgone. Remeber SM with the bright flash demo?
In the videos that were posted of [History of electricity] the arc lamps exhibited this bluish white light also. Exceedingly bright..

Could the popping be a superluminal discharge? We can hear it but can not see it? In other words the popping is an after effect of an after effect of a specific process.

[edit:  never mind]

Quote from: giantkiller on 2011.11.09, 18:42:17
Could the popping be a superluminal discharge? We can hear it but can not see it? In other words the popping is an after effect of an after effect of a specific process.

this is what I think:
When the spin-polarized with spins in the same direction "holes" develop between the spinning entities that make up the medium.  The holes are voids, so energy density of the region is low.  When the region collapses, the universe rushes in and you get a "pop".

=================

Quote from: EMdevices on 2011.11.09, 19:06:15
G was asking what happens when the circuit is complete, but BEFORE current flows.    This is an INCORECT question because it assumes current does not flow, which it does.   A better question is how does the current ramp up as the circuit is closed and HOW DO THE TRANSIENTS DIE OUT.

I dissagree and feel that this question is one of the most important ones to have answered.

If you ask a few physicist, they will tell you that the electrons that form the current must align to the potential before they drift and become a current, leaving the "potential" as the cause for thier movement, and the circuit providing a complete path to move along. 

I always had a problem with this quick explanation becuse particles in a solid, even "free" ones, don't just move that easily.  I tried many many failed experiments to apply external fields of force to conductors in an effort to make electrons move.  Comparing induced current by magnets to that by charged objects makes matters more confusing.  One causes motion by advection, the other by diffusion, respectfully.

[edit:  never mind]

EM
Those crackles were a long time ago, the problem i had was fets were cold blowing, so i had very little experimentation time.
There was one time i managed to get a spectrum video of the crackles happening, but the dam camera was a little out of focus, i will try to locate this as it maybe the only hope i have.

When ever i tried to measure the power in the crackles i would use a low ohm load, in one case i had if i remember correctly 80amp pulses, i was only using low volts and current.

The weird sweeping sounds were only picked up by electret microphones they were not RF in nature or audible with the ear yet the microphone picks them up as audible noises.

Found it, if you turn the sound up you can hear the crackles when the camera is close to the coil



and another

Quote from: EMdevices on 2011.11.09, 20:20:45
@Grumpy
Don't believe everything they tell you G,  these are fairy tales.   Electrons respond instantaneously to the field, but the field travels AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT and takes time to get to the end of a line.   

QuoteSpock: Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.[/quote]

What is a field and how can it "travel"?

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.09, 14:07:20
The magnet is static, so I don't see how it could cause a change at all.

I'm worried we all must be susceptible to knowledge via repetition.

The magnet's field is static. That fact has little to do with a magnet affecting the inductance of a ferrous cored coil. And, it most certainly does.

Almost every statement in ANY book is nothing but theory - no matter how well proven.

I just read a recent article that surprised me. Now, the coneheads are thinking an electron is actually a dipole with the apparent charge only being the actual dominant charge  C.C

In short, the cloud that is the electron is spinning and that spin causes a deformed shape - wider at the equator than between the poles. This then would be why a particle can have negative neutral or positive charge. It depends on whether it spins and which direction. There was also talk about many particles actually being the same except for the spin factor.

These weren't free energy folks publishing, either.

This is why nothing is true until it is confirmed on my bench. Too much of what we learn is hogwash or will be.

I performed numerous coil and magnet configurations.
The goal was to get the output stabilized to see other events.

Here is one of my tests.


Not only to catch the illusive but to capture it. I believe my attempts got closer and closer until I blew up my scope.
Then I wittled it down to this configuration shown by Wattsup that blew up my scope:


And then to this which kicked the house:
Heavy dielectric...

Quote from: Chef on 2011.11.08, 23:12:44
Strange! You could easily create an observable effect, hence the inductance of the transformer windings change when you attach a magnet to the core, which in AC applications does matter. (2*pi*f*L)

Anyway what do you think about the question relating to rectifier losses? Is there more loss, or not, with the magnet in place?

Quote from: WaveWatcher on 2011.11.09, 21:38:17
The magnet's field is static. That fact has little to do with a magnet affecting the inductance of a ferrous cored coil. And, it most certainly does.

Yeah, I was looking at this from the "will this increase the energy in the circuit" perspective, rather than "will it change the efficiency" perspective.  In my experiments, I was trying to increase energy with a static magnetic field, by using various ideas.  Everyone knows a magnet will change the inductance, but there is no gain.

Magnetic fields are a means to polarize space in a predictable way and that is all that I use them for. Good luck to anyone using a magnet for other reasons.  Keep in mind that this region of polarized space moves with the magnet - which is very important.

By using a wired core we create a magnetic field that is not tied to a strict magnetic domain which we can then pump.

[edit:    I'll start another thread soon and discuss transmission]

EM

Thank you for the sims and the transmission line theory. We are in agreement that the bifilar is a transmission line.

Now the problem seems to be in modelling a transmission line with dynamic qualities (wire movement i.e. pulsed physical wire separation or repulsion that changes characteristic impedance).

This is rather more difficult to model and why Peterae and I are doing the bench experiments.

We started these experiments based on your early EUREKA! moments in the other thread and papers you wrote showing there might be OU with wires in repulsion. Have you now withdrawn these theories and suppositions?

I also had another agenda, trying to get vibration in wires with narrow high current pulses of low average power to simulate an SM TPU washboard and gyro effect.

Something interesting is happening here that was unexpected and accidental in my early testing. I have not had the time to go back to it at this time, but intend to, and urge you to actually build up a  test set and see for yourself.

Next round of tests I will be gating bursts of high current pulses (variable) with relaxation or off time between bursts (also a variable)

As always we appreciate your input and the transmission line refresher course. Keep it coming.

Ion and Peter,

If either of you have a capitance meter, can you connect a small cap of a few pf to the meter and while it is on place the cap near your vibrating wires.  Try different orientations.  Does the capacitance reading change?  If so, does it increase?  An increase may be indicative of an increase in permittivity.

I expect permeability to increase, so this is another angle for probing.

ION as you know in my last tests i was getting latch up, it does look like i was getting the Avalanche mode on power off, what do i need to do to get the pulsing you are seeing.

Primarily what is causing the latch up? Is it because i am drawing too much current.

Do i need more primary turns on my CMC
or
Maybe a beefier Thyristor or drop my choke and try the resistor.

Do i also need more voltage to make the Avalanche appear, i could rewire my transformers to give me stepped up mains voltage or about 400V

Peterae:

Although I no longer recommend the ringing choke method in order to generate the high required voltage for the avalanche burst, you can try that. You may need to try a different choke, 200 Ohm DCR, like the one I posted a picture of early on.

I am leaning more towards a gated diac circuit, with the voltage kept close to the avalanche threshold, like rev4 circuit, but I have not had time to try it.

Latchup is normal when you get to a certain current level, so rather than trying to push the frequency and hence required current, I would think the gated burst method might work better and not heat the SCR, which contributes to latchup.

Latchup also tells you that you have good tight coupling between your primary and secondary, hence not enough leakage inductance that would be required to "ring" the triac to the off state by reversing the voltage across it, thus resetting it for the next pulse.

Some inductance external to the pulse transformer primary would probably help, how much I cannot say at this time.

Does latchup occur when you try to push too much current?

More voltage will get you closer to avalanche, but don't use a high pulse repetition rate.

The last snowstorm here brought down trees and power lines. I'm still cleaning up my property, lots of downed tree limbs and widowmakers still hanging high, so may be a while before I hit the bench again.

Be patient, the rain is coming and I may get some bench time.

QuoteAlthough I no longer recommend the ringing choke method in order to generate the high required voltage for the avalanche burst, you can try that. You may need to try a different choke, 200 Ohm DCR, like the one I posted a picture of early on.

I must spend some time looking into this, i have not tried different chokes.

QuoteI am leaning more towards a gated diac circuit, with the voltage kept close to the avalanche threshold, like rev4 circuit, but I have not had time to try it.

I like the gated method, but must try and achieve the avalanche and violent bifilar movement before i move onto this.

QuoteLatchup is normal when you get to a certain current level, so rather than trying to push the frequency and hence required current, I would think the gated burst method might work better and not heat the SCR, which contributes to latchup.

I am pretty sure i am getting latch up before i attain avalanche mode as i only get the bursts when powering down, even when i do see the bursts i still don't see any movement in my bifilar.

QuoteDoes latchup occur when you try to push too much current?

The circuit works without latch up at quiet a low voltage, as i wind up the variac it goes straight to latch up, because of the low voltage this happens at then i have no hope of avalanche.

QuoteThe last snowstorm here brought down trees and power lines. I'm still cleaning up my property, lots of downed tree limbs and widowmakers still hanging high, so may be a while before I hit the bench again.

Glad you are OK there ION sounds real nasty, we had the promise of some a while ago, but it's been very warm for this time of year, only having the heating on for half hour a day at the moment, last year at this time we had a foot over night and that was probably the most i have seen since a kid, we don't normally get much snow down on the south east coast of the UK, last 2 years we have had a fair amount for us though, we are sort of expecting the worst this year LOL, last year my local hospital had over 800 people admitted over the weekend because there was no grit and everyone was falling over  C.C

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.10, 14:23:10
Ion and Peter,

If either of you have a capitance meter, can you connect a small cap of a few pf to the meter and while it is on place the cap near your vibrating wires.  Try different orientations.  Does the capacitance reading change?  If so, does it increase?  An increase may be indicative of an increase in permittivity.

I expect permeability to increase, so this is another angle for probing.

G,

I'm glad you mentioned that experiment. I performed it some years ago, along with how a magnet affects the inductance of a ferrous cored coil.

I think I'll redo that test as I remember the more dielectric involved the more sensitive the capacitor as a sensor to ambient charge. The issue was how well the capacitor was shielded against outside influence.

There was a sensor built just for that. It was effectively a three layered capacitor.

BTW: I'm not dismissing your statements about changing space factors. They do change but I've found the change is almost always localized. 'Almost' because I haven't tested every possibility.

WW

P.S.

Have we decided whether the books are correct that increasing the Gaussian surface area increases inductance without exception? I have the opinion there are exceptions. Ion has confirmed there is an increase when Peterae has stated otherwise (because fingers were used to spread the wires?).

Just curious.

From Peterae:

QuoteThe circuit works without latch up at quiet a low voltage, as i wind up the variac it goes straight to latch up, because of the low voltage this happens at then i have no hope of avalanche.

I suspect if you are using a choke it has a very low DC resistance. Try using the primary of a small audio transformer like the type from a tabletop tube radio, a vertical output transformer from a tube TV or something with a higher Dc resistance and 1 to 2 Henries.

If this still produces latchup, eliminate the choke and try a resistor in the range of 5K to 50K.

If all this does not help, I suspect your SCR has a low holding current value. You may need a huskier old device with a higher holding current requirement. I was using an old NL576N with a holding current requirement of 500mA. What is the holding current for your device?

Holding current defines the amount of current necessary to keep the SCR latched on after the trigger pulse goes away.

We want to stay under this value in order to get the SCR to "self turn off" due to this parameter not being met.

Of course we get a little help from ringing, but when we push the current too high neither will help us turn the SCR off.

Does this make sense?

Maybe I can come up with a workaround for your device.

WW

QuoteIon has confirmed there is an increase when Peterae has stated otherwise (because fingers were used to spread the wires?).

When i scope my bifilar i had large 6kHz pulses on it and this was messing up the measurements on my LCR meter, i moved the setup home and i got the correct readings

Thanks for explaining things ION, just measured my MOT  choke at 20 Ohms i will look at this, i have some 1.85km Brooke's coils i made for the Tetra setup of Spherics, maybe i can put a large bolt through the middle, or even put a core through a spool of wire

BT151-500
Latching current = 10-40mA
Holding current = 7-20mA wow this is way low compared to your 500mA

EDIT there must be a Thyristor for sale on ebay, i am looking

Quote from: WaveWatcher on 2011.11.10, 21:34:49
P.S.

Have we decided whether the books are correct that increasing the Gaussian surface area increases inductance without exception? I have the opinion there are exceptions. Ion has confirmed there is an increase when Peterae has stated otherwise (because fingers were used to spread the wires?).

Just curious.

I think there are exceptions because of our limited understanding and misinterpretations.

For example, we are told and shown that moving a magnet into a coil of wire induces a current in the wire.  Pulling same magnet out reverses the current.  In both instances, magnitude is a function of field density and rate of change.  

The explanations stop there. Nowhere do they mention "why" things are this way.  so, I have had to fill in the blanks on my own.

A magnet has only  a single pole, not two.  One pole is the top and the other is the bottom of the same entity.  The polarity of induced current is reversed, but if the mag field density and velocity are the same then the magnitude of the current produced is the same even if reversed.

Current is induced by differences in density (potential or pressure) - period.  Whether you aid angular momentum or oppose it determines polarity - period.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.10, 22:03:53
Thanks for explaining things ION, just measured my MOT  choke at 20 Ohms i will look at this, i have some 1.85km Brooke's coils i made for the Tetra setup of Spherics, maybe i can put a large bolt through the middle, or even put a core through a spool of wire

BT151-500
Latching current = 10-40mA
Holding current = 7-20mA wow this is way low compared to your 500mA

EDIT there must be a Thyristor for sale on ebay, i am looking

Yes, I just found the data sheet for your device, that is a low holding current for sure.

Sorry we didn't catch that earlier.

Ion,

Have you experienced any lift or jumping (vertical movement) of you bifilar wires or is the motion limited to the horizontal plane?

No problem ION my fault i chose the device, for some reason eBay is not showing pictures right now, so i cannot scan down for the old style packages, i am bound to find one, the challenge seems to be to find datasheets for some of these older devices.
I will hunt one down in the morning. Thanks  O0

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.10, 22:21:19
Ion,

Have you experienced any lift or jumping (vertical movement) of you bifilar wires or is the motion limited to the horizontal plane?

They vibrate in both modes.

Here is a bit of info that may help.

http://www.circuitstoday.com/scr-turning-off-methods

QuoteIn some specially designed SCRs the characteristics are such that a negative gate current increases the holding current so that it exceeds the load current and the device turns-off. The current ratings are presently below 10 A and this type will not be considered further.

http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/vol_3/chpt_7/5.html.

QuoteIt should be mentioned that SCRs may sometimes be turned off by directly shorting their gate and cathode terminals together, or by "reverse-triggering" the gate with a negative voltage (in reference to the cathode), so that the lower transistor is forced into cutoff. I say this is "sometimes" possible because it involves shunting all of the upper transistor's collector current past the lower transistor's base. This current may be substantial, making triggered shut-off of an SCR difficult at best. A variation of the SCR, called a Gate-Turn-Off thyristor, or GTO, makes this task easier. But even with a GTO, the gate current required to turn it off may be as much as 20% of the anode (load) current!

My favorite trick is a small inductor gate to cathode that rings negative after the positive trigger pulse.

Once you understand the pnp+npn structure of the SCR, you can be more creative.  

Quote from: ION on 2011.11.11, 01:45:47
They vibrate in both modes.

Hold a very small conductor over the wires and see if it is pushed away (up).   I.E. Look for a thrust force like Flemming's Left Hand Rule.  Since you are pulsing it, should be repeated rather than only at turn-on.

Peterae:

While doing all this outdoor cleanup, it occurred to me that we can add a third winding to our impedance matching transformer and use it in conjunction with a blocking diode and current limiting resistor to provide the gate turn off current that would allow you to use your existing low holding current SCR's.

I don't know how many turns would have to be added to accomplish this, maybe the secondary itself could be used to couple back a GTO signal. Important thing is to limit the GTO current to only that which is required for turn off, and to block the forward pulse with a diode.

Another way is to tap off the forward negative going pulse input (primary) to the impedance matching transformer, and add a bit of delay before applying it to the gate.

When bench time comes, I am anxious to try these ideas.

I know this is getting messy and maybe it is time to use transistors, but there are many tricks you can do with SCR's which after all are just a pair of complementary transistors in a regenerative configuration.

If you have visited those links I supplied and understood the structure of the SCR and gate turn off mechanism, you will have found another level to designing with SCR's.

I very much appreciate your time on this ION.
I see 2 draw backs with this driving stage, it would be real handy to have a stage that could be turned on and off faster for a narrower pulse.

The second draw back i see with the thyristor circuit is the amount of wasted energy in the high wattage feed resistor.
If it ever came to the point where we needed an efficient drive circuit then we would need to start again.

Ultimately my intentions are different to you, i would really like to be able to gate 2 stages and delay one stage or even drive 2 stages from a 0-250kHz whitenoise gen, so far the power unit we have built is a great addition to the bench  O0

Having said that i am here for the ride and looking forward to seeing the violent oscillations.

I can certainly try the extra winding to turn off my gate, this is probably a better solution for me as i am having a lot of trouble finding a similar device to you, i can buy new modules but they seem to also be high voltage and this may make it difficult to reach the avalanche mode.

I had some bench time this afternoon and was able to try the gated pulse drive circuit, which worked very well, but did not produce what we are looking for.

I was able to vary the number pulses within the window of on time, but try as I might I could not duplicate the vigorous wire movement. I varied the mark to space ratio allowing for various relaxation times, to no avail.

I'm beginning to suspect this is an elusive effect that may have been caused by some type of resonance in my original configuration.

I think I should back off and rethink this thing and try to go back to my original configuration. I blew two power supplies in the process and am a little queasy about going back to that. I will have to afford some type of protection circuitry, which may kill the effect.

I agree that we have spent a lot of time on this, maybe neglecting some of our other pet projects. Also the SCR circuit does have some drawbacks, and it will take a lot of bench time to address them all. I was never too worried about initial power dissipation in the feed resistor, as this can be easily factored and accounted for. Yes, a more efficient circuit will be nice when it is needed should some OU effect be discovered.

Until I have something positive to report and a working circuit that can be readily replicated with commonly available parts, it's back to the think tank for me.

I wouldn't buy any new SCR parts at this time, maybe the time and money would be better spent on a high current BJT or FET transistor pulser.

Sorry if I have led you down a path that seems fruitless at this time, but I totally understand and agree with your sentiments.

Maybe the phase difference of voltage and current is different.

QuoteI agree that we have spent a lot of time on this, maybe neglecting some of our other pet projects.

No i didn't mean this at all, i am here trying to do the bifilar rep because i want to spend time on it, sure other projects will follow, ultimately i will head for the phase pulse stages eventually.

Can i ask would you say that your avalanche mode of operation is causing noise bursts, bit like a burst of white noise.Pulses of varying mark and spacing.

Quote from: Peterae on 2011.11.12, 08:28:51

Can i ask would you say that your avalanche mode of operation is causing noise bursts, bit like a burst of white noise.Pulses of varying mark and spacing.

No not white noise, but pulse period follows (is modulated by) the curve of the top of the ringing choke waveform.

I burned the midnight oil in trying to get a handle on what was happening with my original setup.

I was able to replicate it in the lab last night, but my findings show that the violent excursions were due to two things:

1) The ringing choke caused  high voltages in excess of the avalanche breakdown of the SCR. This generated currents into the bifilar at least double the steady state firing mode. Last night I saw currents as high as 1000 amps. This is partly due to the fact that I had to change out the SCR, as the original was blown from an accidental short. The replacement had an even higher avalanche threshold than the original.

2) The bifilar wires interact with the circuit in a manner that helps create the avalanche condition. But this is not due to any feedback of excess energy as I originally thought.As the wires separate from an initial repulsion, the inductance increases and this shows up as a decrease load on the secondary of the matching transformer which pushes the ringing voltage higher and closer to avalanche. You can see this by watching the amplitude of the pulse as the wires are separated manually.

It is easy to see that a relaxation oscillator can occur from this arrangement. When the burst occurs, the power supply takes some time to recover charge into the primary storage capacitor. As this voltage climbs, the ringing choke peak voltage starts approaching avalanche then a burst occurs when it hits avalanche.

The original waveform drawing I made is correct but does not show the magnitude of voltage and current being generated by the ringing choke, as my scope probe wouldn't support the division required to keep the image on screen. I had to use a small divider 10 to 1 on top of the probes 10x setting.

Total casualties on this project included 2 power supplies and 3 expensive SCR's. I was able to repair the power supplies. One of the SCR's failed in an unusual way, it became a power diac with a 200 volt breakdown.

The next step, if there is one, would be a better pulse gen circuit that is not affected by the changing inductance of the wires as they repel. We have identified and fairly thoroughly analyzed the mechanism that created the violent excursions. If there is any value in tapping into the parametric inductance and possible OU as EM suggested, it will require a rethink of how this might be done.

Attached is the configuration I used last night.

Great work ION, glad you managed to fix the power supplies.

I have seen the effect of increasing voltage when the wires are separated and could see this may cause the Avalanche mode to happen, amazing 1000Amps, i think if there's any magic it will be in very narrow high current pulses, i wonder if it would be possible to use a couple of saturable rings to sharpen the pulse's in the config that i explored in my bench, there was only a 3% loss in energy for a multiple stage pulse sharpener.

I am continuing work here, i want to next get the negative gate turn off working, and may connect up some saturable inductors to the secondary to see what happens.

Could you use a pulse generation circuit that has a delay line to set the pulse width, which also forces shut-off.  You'd effectively isolate the trigger from the pulse power and be able to sweep through the frequency range.

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.12, 17:01:58
Could you use a pulse generation circuit that has a delay line to set the pulse width, which also forces shut-off.  You'd effectively isolate the trigger from the pulse power and be able to sweep through the frequency range.

Sounds good, got a circuit handy? I have an old Chronetics pulse generator that allows for quite a bit of pulse tuning, maybe just driving a transistor with that will do the job.

Quote from: ION on 2011.11.13, 01:31:36
Sounds good, got a circuit handy? I have an old Chronetics pulse generator that allows for quite a bit of pulse tuning, maybe just driving a transistor with that will do the job.

Transistors are probably good, if you don't need a fast rise-time.

See attached paper by Baker with circuits.  "Ferrite bead" means a small ferrite bead, and the pulse will be too low if you use a larger core.   Start with a single avalanche transistor (I use 2N5551's) get your trigger working first.   I use very low current, but you can use them in parallel and series to optimize for current/voltage.

I have other files on my bench.  One has a burn-in procedure.

I've added the negative feedback winding i used 25 turns of lighter gauge,added the diode and 100 Ohm resistor across the gate.
It does work to a degree, the frequency of firing seems to increase as i turn up the supply voltage, and my original pot across the zener seems to not do anything.
Maybe i have the coil the wrong way around, i am not sure, the negative current being fed back to the gate occurs at the same time as the negative drive from the diac, here's 3 shots of the gate vs secondary, i used a high wattage 1k variable resistor in series with the diode and gate, each shot has progressively more feedback, on the 3rd shot the pot is fully on or S/C

I have had it running where it does not latch, but strangely as i increase the supply voltage the secondary pulse remains the same amplitude and all that happens is the mains bulb gets brighter

Peterae

Thanks for the scope shots, they are interesting.

QuoteMaybe i have the coil the wrong way around, i am not sure, the negative current being fed back to the gate occurs at the same time as the negative drive from the diac

The GTO pulse looks too large, as if it is the actual firing pulse. Have you tried reversing the connection?

If you are getting some type of regenerative feedback that is triggering the SCR, it could be that the phase of the new winding is backwards.

Or maybe too much capacitance in the diode is doing the triggering on the forward pulse. The GTO signal should be applied on the ringback pulse, the diode should block the forward pulse.

Always put a current limiting safety resistor on series with the pot so that you don't blow the gate with too much current.

When it is working properly, you should still have triggering control from your frequency adjust pot.

Thanks for trying this, when I get back to the bench I will also.

Hi ION
Thanks, yes i ran out of time last night to get my head around what's going on, i will try switching the polarity of the coil tonight, i am using a 1n4007 diode.
The first little positive pulse is from the diac, this must be the turn on pulse as it's positive, the coil i have added is reinforcing the negative pulse as can be seen by the 3 different amplitudes when i turn my 1K pot.

I managed to put a bit more time in tonight, although i really need to get my camera home again to video the result, it does not seem to stop latch up though, but certainly worth a try, my next move is to start playing with the choke/resistor and see how this affects the running.

If SM discovered the basic effect for the TPU during his work with speaker voic coils and his spatial audio work, then the coils wre probably in a magnet. 

Use of a magnet may allow you to use less current than your current approach.

This is just an idea, but i think i may know why i have been getting the crackling from the wire in my other experiments.

I have long suspected that by varying the pulse delay between 2 pulses it is the same as driving the coil with a known set frequency, for instance if i was driving a coil at 1MHz then the period between each peak would be 1uS, if i was to drive at 10MHz then i would have a peak spacing of 100nS.

So if i pulse and then wait for 100nS and then pulse again, it's the same as pulsing the coil at 10MHz but i can have a long relaxation time after this second pulse, my master frequency can be anything, let's say 100Hz, so every 10mS i would send 2 pulses with a 100nS delay between them.
So in this case the coil's properties are flipping from being run at 10MHz but with a long relaxation period in between this, the coils impedance is all over the place, so now if i have a coil that has a self resonant frequency of 1MHz and i send 2 pulses with a 100nS delay between them then the coil takes on the properties as if momentarily it's being driven at 10MHz, wouldn't the impedance suddenly become very high if not open circuit for a very short time, but as soon as that second pulse stops, bang the coil's properties revert back to not being driven at all for 10mS, i am in effect flipping the properties of the coil from one extreme to another, i am not sure how long a coil takes to change it's properties but if this was extremely fast.

There may not be OU causing the explosion, i have never been able to prove this, but if by varying the time suddenly became a short circuit from an open circuit impedance then this may cause a violent tug.

I have previously proven that by varying the delay time between the pulses that the amount of current the coil draws varies with regard to the ringing that would be seen if the coil twangs.

Based on my own "explosion" experience, I am convinced that space itself becomes locally saturated and discharges (dissipates). 

You can make a sparkgap pulser using a MOT or Ignition Transformer (10kv) with a dual series gap and some distance between the gaps.  Keep the supply ungrounded.  With a little adjustment of the gaps, you can make energy reflect back towards the supply. 

This energy will be outside the wire, in space, you will be able to feel it like the air is thicker.  It will build and dissipate at a slow cyclic rate, taking several seconds or even minutes. If you are not careful it will ground through your body like a wave of strong pressure moving across your body, arm-chest-arm.  I grounded it to me scope, no harm done, but scared the Hell out of me.

This shows several things that are not immediately evident:

The first two were discovered by Tesla and included in a couple of his patents.
1. a spark gap projects particles of the medium itself, with positive pulses projecting positive particles
2. the projected particles will reflect off metal
3. The particles will accumulate if supply excedes dissipation
4. if a sink, such as a circuit, is provided, the particles will move along the conductor as a current (take a look at kapandze's grounded systems)
5. the efect produced by the particles vary with frequency as does the nature of the particles itself.  The particle frequency varies with the properties of the system, such as the self-inductance, capacitance, etc.
6. Feynman, Nipher, Rendtorff, Jefimenko, Galilia, Goihbarg, and others have demonstrated that energy flows into a circuit at the supply and out at the load.  The old "Drude" model of electrons flowing through a wire is obsolete.

and much more.

Peterae,

It is easy to forget that a 'space' between pulses is the same as a pulse between 'spaces'.

Relative to the peak of the pulse zero is an equal and opposite value.

You can ring a bell with a single stroke  ;)

In your case, you may be pushing the child in the swing from both sides  :o

Hmmm... Enough of that.

Energy is best converted during cancellation. If your following pulse is in opposition to a previous pulse (perhaps reflected and meeting with cancellation) then the energy must manifest itself in some way.

It wouldn't be the first time for a pulse generator designer to use collision of following and reflected pulses to create incredibly short leftover pulses.

Quotet is easy to forget that a 'space' between pulses is the same as a pulse between 'spaces'.

I am not so sure about this, the reason is that there is definitely an upper boundary to the time that a pulse has to occur, for instance with the large pulse this can clearly be seen to ride in amplitude a sort of sine wave which almost seems to relate to ringing, this all occurs in the first 300nS very little happens after this and nothing can be seen after 600nS

There always has to be a relaxation period of at least 300nS-600nS to get the explosions to occur, this is why my first experiment was so good at creating the explosion effect, the fet's random re-triggering was causing RF bursts with relaxation periods in between, and just sometimes the timing and relaxation was just right to create the explosion, bizarrely these explosion did not occur that often as can be seen from the video.

Something i never managed to video, i found a phase delay setting, that was causing these RF burst at random intervals of 1-2 bursts every 10 seconds, how weird was that, i could not get my head around the triggering event causing these, my mA meter would read 10-15mA and bang it would hit the end stop for a brief moment while the fet's re-triggered and then back to 10-15mA all at random timing.

Try tapping into the explosion zone:

Lay a wire along side the bifilar pair as a collector, connect it to your load and the other end of the load to ground.

This simple clue would permit the configuration of a limited sized device in all the device packages we have seen.
This would also permit the 'A new type of induction and the way coils work'.
This would also permit the 'Ramp up' as the capacitance on the outer stages charge up.
This would permit '3 phase segmentation' but interleaved.
This would also permit the use of 2 switches as seen in the LTPU.

Quote from: Grumpy on 2011.11.16, 00:58:08
Try tapping into the explosion zone:

Lay a wire along side the bifilar pair as a collector, connect it to your load and the other end of the load to ground.

Hey ION look at this circuit i just found, it's an open source CDTI thyristor ignition system, it charges a cap and uses the energy to drive an HV coil and it's digitally triggered. It also has a handy 12V to 220V inverter system, nice simple circuit.

http://www.me.iitb.ac.in/~ems/dccdi.pdf

I love this circuit, it even shuts the inverter down when it fires the HV so only the charged cap energy is delivered to the coil, by varying the 220K feedback resistor and adding more secondary turns to the inverter transformer then it would be possible to make it a variable supply.

Would i be correct in saying that this circuit cannot suffer from thyristor latch up. and is pretty efficient as well although i guess it's not so good for you 200 Amps pulse or is it?

I would guess it has a pretty low repetition firing rate which would be a shame

If the CDI circuits are that complicated, I'm not sure I would like one in my car, unless of course they are supper reliable and the benefits outweigh the costs, i.e, the long term costs when one has to get the car towed to the shop for fixing!   

Quote from: Peterae on 2012.01.15, 21:14:54
Hey ION look at this circuit i just found, it's an open source CDTI thyristor ignition system, it charges a cap and uses the energy to drive an HV coil and it's digitally triggered. It also has a handy 12V to 220V inverter system, nice simple circuit.

http://www.me.iitb.ac.in/~ems/dccdi.pdf

I love this circuit, it even shuts the inverter down when it fires the HV so only the charged cap energy is delivered to the coil, by varying the 220K feedback resistor and adding more secondary turns to the inverter transformer then it would be possible to make it a variable supply.

Would i be correct in saying that this circuit cannot suffer from thyristor latch up. and is pretty efficient as well although i guess it's not so good for you 200 Amps pulse or is it?

I would guess it has a pretty low repetition firing rate which would be a shame

It is a nice circuit.
The scr is a 2 way device, which will allow the cap and coil to stay connected to make use of oscillation and provide greater output. It is more eff to charge the cap to 200v than it is to hold direct battery current to the primary until the switch opens in a point ignition setup.

Similar to a points system ignition, the capacitor across the points(switch) becomes the charged primary coils path after the points open, then oscillation. Without the cap, the spark is very weak.
In a way, a simple point system ign is  a multi spark ignition.

Mags