Electrostatic motor

[TinMan]

So i came across this on OU,and i know TK has built a replication-->but as yet has not reported his finding's.

Here is the video that was presented on OU
Thoughts any one
Would or could this be actually be made to work on the !already existing! static charge around us?.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YreCJDvIX2Q

[Chet K]

Well
Koala's are fascinated By Static charge...

But I am suspicious of Mark W's motor...

here is a vid of his Pooch in his living room..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO-phqmyqdY

[Grumage]

Well
Koala's are fascinated By Static charge...

But I am suspicious of Mark W's motor...

here is a vid of his Pooch in his living room..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO-phqmyqdY

Dear Chet.

I have 2 wishes........

1. I wish I had seen your post earlier !! 

2. I think there should be a thumb's down emoticon added to the forum !!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-AqL-8RGNc       

Cheers Grum.

[TinselKoala]

Heh.... love that dog!

@Grum: Your rep looks great, very precise, and I love the low friction axle bearings! Have you got a HV source of any kind? I'll bet that yours would work if: 1) you turned the screws around so that the points were facing the disc sectors; and 2) you provided a source of HV, at least 12 or 15 kV, with negative to the points and positive to the curved electrode.

My own build just uses (at the moment) an improvised axle that isn't nearly as smooth and free running as that one. I got some feedback about my first set of "points" which were... well, they were points. So I made some others with a "round sharp edge" by drilling a cavity into the aluminium push-pin, then filing away around it until I got the "round sharp edge."

The original poster hasn't answered any questions or made further comments in his YT video. Which seems natural, since his "explanation" really doesn't quite make sense. Which also is quite natural... since the whole thing is a wind-up, after all.

Mine "works" quite well if it's placed so that a blast of air is blowing along the top edge of the disk.


In answer to Tinman's question: No, I don't believe so, I think it will need a concentrated source (and this was my feeling before I even started).  I have a lot of static-sensitive stuff strewn about that I'm working on right now, and the local humidity is very high, so I'm not going to be pulling out a strong static source just now, but later on I'll be testing my build with a HV supply, connected with wires unfortunately, to see if mine will turn at all that way at least. It should, being essentially a Franklin/corona type motor design.


I do have one question: In the original video, is one whole side of the disc covered with aluminium foil, or is it just painted a light color? Somebody asked this in the video comments, but the poster never replied.

[Aking.21]

build it properly.................................

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YreCJDvIX2Q

Min 1.05

[TinselKoala]

So are you saying that you believe the entire side is covered in aluminium foil? When he refers to the "plate" he clearly indicates just the "plate" made from just the foil strip, outlines it with his finger, etc.

If you cover one whole side with a conductor and it is in contact with the strips, it will kill any possible "known" electrostatic motor action. The strips should be isolated so that the charge doesn't neutralize across the structure. Corona motors work best if the entire thing is an insulator that is capable of holding patch charges in place, and Franklin motors have conductive charge carriers that store and carry charge around from electrode to electrode. Induction machines like the Dirod or Wimshurst or Bonetti depend on opposite-side charge carriers being shorted at just the proper time in the cycle by the neutral structures (brushes or pointy combs).

I've done a _lot_ of work with various kinds of electrostatic generators and motors. Maybe I'm deluded but I think I know a lot about these devices, what makes them work, and how to get them to perform properly. There are quite a few videos in my collection concerning some of this work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpoTGdbcUzE

I'll be happy to coat one entire side of my rotor with aluminium foil, but then... you'll have to come up with some other reason why it's not working.

(Or is it....     )

[Aking.21]

Maybe it acts like a Tesla radiant energy collector - only it moves. He could easily charge it up with a hidden slayer or Kacher.

I don't see why he should have the blind side covered with anything at all if it's not absolutely necessary.

My money's on an electrostatic external source.  Could even be a charged ebony rod or other source of static.

But this is only a side curiosity for me.

I'm into VAR.

[Aking.21]

Another possibility is that the "concave" side acts like a grounding through the wood. This would then neutralize the current from the aluminium plate.

I guess the only way to know is to build the thing PROPERLY.

For those interested:  supermarket pizzas are a great source of circular polystyrene!!!

So you have a nice treat and a free disc all nicely manufactured.

But we really need to know this before we even start:-

https://www.trifield.com/content/tribo-electric-series/

[Smudge]

But we really need to know this before we even start:-

https://www.trifield.com/content/tribo-electric-series/

For charge transfer to take place the two materials within the tribo-electric series must make contact with each other, they must touch.  No signs of that in the video.

Smudge

[Aking.21]

For charge transfer to take place the two materials within the tribo-electric series must make contact with each other, they must touch.  No signs of that in the video.

Smudge

I disagree:  Comb your hair and run a tap (faucet).  Then place your comb next to he running water.
The water will deflect without touching.

[T-1000]

Just a side note, one of experimentators Lidmotor have extensive collection of own videos for this topic - https://www.youtube.com/user/Lidmotor/search?query=electrostatic

You might invite him to this forum for the discussion...

Cheers!

[Centraflow]

For charge transfer to take place the two materials within the tribo-electric series must make contact with each other, they must touch.  No signs of that in the video.

Smudge

Right, but they do touch, there are two charge carriers on that disk, the dark side and the grey side, they are two different paints, I would say that is his secret, I would say one side is a positive charge carrier and the other negative. The aluminium strips I would say are sticky backed duct tape.

Building the frame out of plastic would stop it from working, non static wood is a good choice.

The idea of an air flow somewhere off screen I think is always possible, but I don't think so here, no other air movement in the video, such as hair on arms or head.

Oh well, just have to build it, the tribo- electric series gives the possibilities of the two paints, nice find.

regards

Mike

[TinselKoala]

I disagree:  Comb your hair and run a tap (faucet).  Then place your comb next to he running water.
The water will deflect without touching.

No, the water deflecting is a _result_ of the triboelectric charging of the comb by the moving _contact_ with the hair.

[Smudge]

I disagree:  Comb your hair and run a tap (faucet).  Then place your comb next to he running water.
The water will deflect without touching.

The charge transfer takes place between your hair and the comb.  The comb gets charged.  And that involves contact.  That is the tribo-electric effect

With the charged comb near the water there is no charge transfer from the comb to the water, there is no tribo-electric effect.  The E field from the comb polarizes the water so now the water is an electric dipole, and a dipole within a non-uniform field exhibits a translatory force.  Some naive texts talk about inducing an equal but opposite charge onto the nearby object, but that is wrong.  The only charge movement is across the water stream, it gets polarized.  Same thing in magnetics, iron filings near a magnet get magnetically polarized (magnetized) to become a magnetic dipole.  Then you have a tiny iron filing magnet being attracted to the big magnet.  Magnetic poles don't jump the gap from magnet to iron filing.

Smudge

[TinselKoala]

Right, but they do touch, there are two charge carriers on that disk, the dark side and the grey side, they are two different paints, I would say that is his secret, I would say one side is a positive charge carrier and the other negative. The aluminium strips I would say are sticky backed duct tape.

Building the frame out of plastic would stop it from working, non static wood is a good choice.

The idea of an air flow somewhere off screen I think is always possible, but I don't think so here, no other air movement in the video, such as hair on arms or head.

Oh well, just have to build it, the tribo- electric series gives the possibilities of the two paints, nice find.

regards

Mike

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
In the first place triboelectric charging is a result of rubbing two materials at different levels on the triboelectric scale past each other. There is nothing "triboelectric" about the apparatus as presented in the original video. No rubbing contact = no triboelectric transfer of charge.
In the second place the aluminum strips will short out any difference in charge between the two sides of the disk. The thin layer of adhesive on foil duct tape might as well not be there at all where electrostatic voltages are concerned.
In the third place, what is "non-static" wood? There are insulators and there are conductors. Wood, by containing moisture, is more or less a conductor depending on the moisture content. Very dry wood is almost as good an insulator as plastic. Varnish your wood and it helps to make it more insulating. Moisture on surfaces, like adsorbed moisture from the air on plastic surfaces, will conduct enough to kill the performance of electrostatic devices. If you have any conduction between oppositely charged areas of an electrostatic machine... that makes a short-circuit and the charges will neutralize. For there to be appreciable mechanical forces produced by charge accumulation -- like enough to rotate that wheel rapidly -- the voltage differences concerned must be high and sustained, and that means that even what we would normally consider to be "high resistance" is still conductive enough to allow the electrostatic voltage difference to neutralize.

[Smudge]

Having dismissed tribo-electric effects, has anyone thought about the Earth's electric field?  Outside your house it should be in the order of 300V/m as I recall.  With the Earth charged to a negative potential the field is normally vertical and pointing downwards, but it can change dramatically when thunder clouds are overhead and even reverse direction.  So we now have the possibility of some insulated object being polarized by the Earth's field, and all we need to do to use that polarization to get circular motion is arrange for the Earth's field to be distorted in some way so that one side of the wheel gets more force than the other.  That suggests some non-contacting thingies that are different on opposite sides of the wheel, while the wheel carries objects that can be polarized, like aliminum strips.  Just some thoughts.  You need to be outside because your house acts like an electrostatic screen.

Smudge

[Centraflow]

This doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
In the first place triboelectric charging is a result of rubbing two materials at different levels on the triboelectric scale past each other. There is nothing "triboelectric" about the apparatus as presented in the original video. No rubbing contact = no triboelectric transfer of charge.
In the second place the aluminum strips will short out any difference in charge between the two sides of the disk. The thin layer of adhesive on foil duct tape might as well not be there at all where electrostatic voltages are concerned.
In the third place, what is "non-static" wood? There are insulators and there are conductors. Wood, by containing moisture, is more or less a conductor depending on the moisture content. Very dry wood is almost as good an insulator as plastic. Varnish your wood and it helps to make it more insulating. Moisture on surfaces, like adsorbed moisture from the air on plastic surfaces, will conduct enough to kill the performance of electrostatic devices. If you have any conduction between oppositely charged areas of an electrostatic machine... that makes a short-circuit and the charges will neutralize. For there to be appreciable mechanical forces produced by charge accumulation -- like enough to rotate that wheel rapidly -- the voltage differences concerned must be high and sustained, and that means that even what we would normally consider to be "high resistance" is still conductive enough to allow the electrostatic voltage difference to neutralize.

Put it this way, air has charged ions both positive and negative which co-exist, by moving the disk to start the process, charges are placed on either side of the disc depending on the affinity of each side.

As far as the aluminium duct tape, I use it for making caps but with an added dielectric, my comment was just that, a comment that it looked like duct tape and not a kitchen foil or raping from your favorite chocolate

Yes moisture would be a killer, some woods do not build up huge charges, unlike most man made fibers and plastics that build up huge charges, like an acrylic sheet, or is that not true? I'm not a "static" person well apart from when I put my key in my gate, then I see blue flashes and get a nasty jolt I now get the wife to unlock the gate I must be a walking cap or running one always after a run, wearing running shoes, cotton pop socks, cotton shorts and a cotton T shirt with no sleeves, so what gets charged and how? I really would like to know as I'm frightened to touch my gate, it's really pissing me off

regards

mike

[Bob Smith]

Hey Mike
It seems that every self-runner gets their share of static. Oh well... 
Bob

[Duncan]

Leap the gate in a single bound!

[Centraflow]

Hey Mike
It seems that every self-runner gets their share of static. Oh well... 
Bob

regards

Mike

PS no more running for me for a while with 4 broken ribs received yesterday.

[Grumage]

Mike

PS no more running for me for a while with 4 broken ribs received yesterday.

Dear Mike.

I hope you didn't take Duncan literally ?? 

On a more serious note. I hope you make a speedy recovery.

Cheers Grum.

[Aking.21]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S072ScKjx8s

[TinselKoala]

Bravo LidMotor!

However, I myself am not surprised that it works with an external HV power source; in fact I said as much in the early days, in comments up above. The miraculous bit was that the first demonstration "seemed" to work with no external power supply. I even examined the first video carefully looking for tiny hidden wires that might have served for connection to an external supply but couldn't see any.

LidMotor's demonstration is a combination Franklin-corona ES motor, and isn't surprising to me. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpemKuf6X_c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqf3bUL4YqE

[Grumage]

Behold.......... The hand of Grum......................'s  Son !! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiqEtigpJaI

LOOK No wires !!

Cheers Grum.

[TinselKoala]

Nicely done!