Author Topic: Joule Lamp (Read 345603 times)

NickZ · « **Reply #180 on:** June 25, 2012, 05:04:06 PM »

That's towers, like in mini towers, not towels. I saw the error but couldn't edit it.
So, towels it is...

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #181 on:** June 25, 2012, 07:46:57 PM »

Today I added a 6th LED bulb (of the corn-cob type I've described earlier) and the Lumens/Watt went UP.

Vid posted here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7lUFPh4ttM&feature=youtu.be

Text:

Lynxsteam has previously noted in his air-core experiments (with the Lasersaber SJR 2.0 circuit) that when one adds an additional LED bulb (after the 2nd one), the DC input current drawn does not go up by much. Here are some data taken at 11.0 V DC input (and I have added three ferrite rods near the central axis of the "cranberry" coil as previously described):

4 bulbs draws 342 mA (so 3.76 W) and produces approx 374 Lm, so 100 Lm/W

5 bulbs draws 344 mA (so 3.78 W) and produces approx 420 Lm, so 111 Lm/W

6 bulbs draws 353 mA (so 3.88 W) and produces approx 443 Lm, so 114 Lm/W,
this is the case shown in this vid.
114 Lm/W is well above the Lm/W I expect from these LED bulbs; so this result adds to my interest in this ongoing study.

When I hook up my DSO, I see a frequency (output) of approx 21 KHz, and the voltage across the bulbs (i.e., across the power-strip plug feeding the LED bulbs) is 460 Vrms -- which is pushing my DSO I think. This is tapping into the 75th winding of the primary; so I would expect around 130 V AC output just based on the ratio of secondary to primary windings... so I'm trying to understand the output voltage. My little DMM set to 750 VAC registers "overload" when I try to read the output AC voltage with it.

Again, I thank Lynxsteam for excellent observations and ideas and Lasersaber for the basic circuit being scrutinized!
______________

If anyone can explain the observation of 460 Vrms on the output, and the overload on the little Cen-Tec multimeter, I would appreciate it! An accurate measurement of the output voltage (and current) is one way to measure the output power, so I'd like to understand the output voltage! has anyone else measured it?

Lynxsteam · « **Reply #182 on:** June 25, 2012, 08:57:34 PM »

Joule Seeker,

Congratulations on 114 L/W!

If this were a standard transformer then you would expect AC voltage input to be transformed by the turns ratio. 12 volts ac in 120 volts ac out. I do use this for calculating turns ratio, however since this is a blocking oscillator you will get high voltage spikes. These spikes can be further accentuated by voltage amplification in the secondary. In your "cranberry" model LJL 4.0 the voltage amplification is double. That voltage gets converted to amperage in the load.

And it just so happens the voltage drop across diodes (LEDs) is between 3-5 volts, perfect for reverse biasing a transistor which is basically the breakdown voltage for the base to collector. The brighter we light the LEDs the more we reverse bias the transistor and the lower the frequency and higher the output (self regulating load). So by increasing voltage at input you are increasing the bias voltage closer and closer to 5 volts. Push the DC bias voltage beyond 5 volts and you will probably fry the transistor.

On my latest LJL 5.0 the voltage amplification in the secondary is even higher. I have designed in self capacitance "ala Tesla" and now I am pushing the transistor and LEDs to their limit. The transistor gets hot and so do the LED bases.

When you run on 11 volts you are probably avoiding this wasted heat energy. We can de-tune the coil arrangement to run on 12 volts in that sweet spot you are finding.

I am just about done detailing the design, schematic and instructions. I could wait for more testing or turn everyone loose replicating what I have so far.

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #183 on:** June 25, 2012, 09:01:35 PM »

Thanks for the input, Lynxsteam -- makes sense.

Also, Slider writes by email, it may partly be a "Tesla tower phenomenon." I would like to learn more about that!

Lynxsteam · « **Reply #184 on:** June 25, 2012, 09:33:08 PM »

It is a Tesla tower we are talking about here in this thread. It is a little different because we are confining the field instead of allowing the field to radiate as RF. A typical Tesla Coil for making plasma and wireless lighting has a very small primary at one end and the voltage amplifies through self inductance up the coil to very high voltage and miniscule amperage. What we want is about 120 volts and 60 ma per bulb for a 7.5 watt LED. Your 353 ma is on target for 6 bulbs. The secondary spikes may actually be 480 vac and the amps are only 9 ma.

Its similar to the way a Bedini SSG can charge a 12 volt battery with back emf spikes of 200 volts. The battery clamps the voltage to 12 and the spikes get converted to amps at 12 volts across the plates.

This is part of the reason mixing LED bulbs doesn't work so well. It is like trying to charge a 6 volt and 12 volt battery in parallel. One is going to consume more power than the other.

NickZ · « **Reply #185 on:** June 25, 2012, 10:05:51 PM »

Is that like the towel phenomenon. Might be related?

I also fried my share of transistors, as they will only take so much. To the trash pile the Tip31, the 2n3055, and over 20 of the 2n2222. I can't even replace them through the Shack here as they are out of stock. This was being careful, but... my last 2n2222 when up in smoke last night. I'm having to use PNP3906 for now, backwards polarized, they work, but not as well.
So, the transistor is of course the critical part of the Exciter circuit, which to my way of thinking are related like brother and sister, to your LS type circuit, as they are all solid state Tesla stuff.
Both Slider and myself and on this like a cat following a mouse.

Hope that you guys reach a conclusion, as to what can be done. I've seen that 10 volts is much easier on the transistors, but, their base voltage may not be all there is to this. And each battery that I've used works differently, some produce more heat, and some transistors also heat up more than others. Balancing transistor heat, to maximum output is tricky, to say the least.

I can't measure the pulsed output voltage correctly, but I'm getting a neon to light up brightly off the towers, (both sides of the neon, might be AC?) and my circuit will light all the leds and CFL bulbs that I place on it. But, the CFLs are sometimes hard to light, and are not 100% totally lit up. Gutted CFLs are easier to light by "kick starting", using a 4700mf capacitor, which is what I'm working on now.
I'll buy some of the Led bulbs sometime soon like you all are using, but since I have several gutted CFLs I'm making use of them, for now. I've never really liked the light given off by the regular CFLs, but this is different somehow, and each bulb has a different quality to it, also. Rather ghostly at times... plus they will never burn out.

Great work guys...

Thanks again.
NickZ

Lynxsteam · « **Reply #186 on:** June 26, 2012, 01:19:30 AM »

Here is an excerpt from wiki in regards to Tesla coils and the more recent "flyback" transformer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_coil

_{^{The Tesla coil is an early predecessor (along with the induction coil) of a more modern device called a flyback transformer, which provides the voltage needed to power the cathode ray tube used in some televisions and computer monitors. The disruptive discharge coil remains in common use as the ignition coil[48][49] or spark coil in the ignition system of an internal combustion engine. These two devices do not use resonance to accumulate energy, however, which is the distinguishing feature of a Tesla coil. They do use inductive "kick", the forced, abrupt decay of the magnetic field, such that a voltage is provided by the coil at its primary terminals that is much greater than the voltage that was applied to establish the magnetic field, and it is this higher voltage that is then multiplied by the transformer turns ratio. Thus, they do store energy, and a Tesla resonator stores energy.}}

We are kind of playing with a hybrid of the flyback circuit and some features of Tesla's work. Resonance is not necessary because these are closely coupled coils.

NickZ · « **Reply #187 on:** June 26, 2012, 01:41:31 AM »

Resonance is necessary, for the optimum results to be achieved. We can still plug along without the use of resonance, but can 100 or even 1000 leds or more be lit on 12v, and hardly no amps. That's what we are trying to find out. There may be more to this than just voltage and amps, and frequency. WATTLESS Current, is what I'm looking for.
The devices like the Av plug can read this type of current, it may be just Radio Frequencies, but it may not be.
Dr. Stiffler may have the answer by now, as I don't think that he stopped at just lighting a few leds with no battery, or any other power source.

All Tesla coils up to now had to be fed from a separate source, but that may soon change.
Resonance is what makes up for all the draw that most components put on a system.
It's also why I love your one transistor circuit.
Can it also be done without the transistor, and without a battery? Yes???

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #188 on:** June 26, 2012, 05:23:52 PM »

Lynx noted:

Quote

since this is a blocking oscillator you will get high voltage spikes. These spikes can be further accentuated by voltage amplification in the secondary.

This seems correct to me and is the reason why I think we have to be more sophisticated than simply measuring Vrms and Irms and multiplying these together in an attempt to get the OUTPUT power measurement. These high-voltage spikes are not likely to be correctly handled in a multimeter trying to estimate Vrms, for example, AND I expect some of the time that the output voltage and current will be OUT OF PHASE further complicating the calculation.

There are two solutions to this that I can think of, which should allow for an accurate measurement of the OUTPUT power. (PS -- input power is relatively easy to measure, since it is basically DC.)

1. Continue to use LED bulbs as currently designed. Use a fast DSO scope to measure V(t) across the output in channel 1 and I(t) across a known carbon resistor in channel 2 -- and multiply these together in real time to get P(t) = V(t) x I(t). Then integrate P(t) to get the total output energy over a time interval T. (You can then divide E/T to get the average output power.)

2. Use calorimetric methods as I've discussed previously; although this is more difficult with LED bulbs as currently used. It may be POSSIBLE to run the entire circuit including LED bulbs in a large calorimeter and then over time, as the heat comes out of the LED bases, transistor, etc., one can get the integrated total output energy.

Meanwhile, we have lots of light per watt! and that in itself is an important goal.

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #189 on:** June 26, 2012, 09:31:23 PM »

Hmmm... over at the EF thread on Don Smith devices, I saw this today -- sure looks like a good thing to try with the LLL circuit (see attached).

The idea is to use the current circuit to STEP V UP, then use a step down transformer on the output. And see what happens!

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #190 on:** June 27, 2012, 12:39:56 AM »

Here's the vid that goes with the air-core device above:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOwsEKN4S8Q&feature=channel&list=UL

Note the primary coil, the secondary, and a tertiary coil for pick-up... interesting stuff.

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #191 on:** June 27, 2012, 04:59:28 AM »

If we can run with incandescent bulbs on the output, or something that predominately puts out more heat than light, we can use the water-calorimetric method. Let me describe a bit more fully:

Quote from: mr.clean;199120

Don Smith Device Project Part 31: 3 Watts In, 20 Watt Halogen Lit Bright - YouTube

So just throw it in a glass of water? It does heat up MAJOR so ok, i'll try that, hey what is the heat formula? anyone know off hand?

Chet has a good idea here. If I may make a few suggestions... I've done many of these water-heating studies (mostly when I was working with Davey-Sonic-Bell devices).

1. The heat formula for water is:
Eoutput = Qheating = 4.186 J/g-degC * mass of water heated * (Tfinal - Tinitial)

2. and for water vaporized, we have:
Qvaporization = 2260 J/g * mass of water vaporized.

To keep it simple, keep the water well below "steaming" temp so you don't have to worry (much) about vaporization. So you just use equation 1.

3. Suggest you use distilled water. Tap water is much more conductive; it also can leave a residue upon evaporation.

4. Measure the temperature (Tfinal and Tinitial) in Centigrade with a reliable device, such as this: http://www.ebay.com/itm/TM-902C-K-Type-Digital-Thermometer-Thermocouple-Probe-/170858632394?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27c7f7d4ca
-- a Type-K digital thermometer over a measured time interval (several minutes at least). Suggest using a styrofoam or other plastic container, thus insulated to slow down heat transfer to the environment. And be sure to stir the water right after the run-time (e.g. with a plastic spoon), and let the temp-probe come to a stable temp (several seconds).

5. If someone gets to the stage where he/she could replace the output-light-bulbs with a heating element ready to immerse in water, this would be better in the calorimeter -- all heat output (no light). I have an extra heating-element (R = 54 ohms); would be glad to send this on to the willing experimenter.

6. Example. We wish the actual output energy by measuring the heating of water for the or heating element immersed in water, and then the average output power is the Energy/Time interval. Say we use 100g (100ml) of distilled water in a styrofoam container (e.g. large cup) and the water heats up 5.4 degrees C in 4.0 minutes. (For more accuracy, paint the container black on the inside to absorb the emitted light.)

Then the output energy and power for this example are:

Eoutput = 4.186 J/g-degC * 100g * (5.4deg-C) = 2260 Joules,

and the average power output is:
Pout = Eoutput/Time-interval = 2260J/240seconds = 9.4 Watts.

Ah, that's so nice to have that number (for the actual device!). We can do a bit better later; this is QUITE GOOD for now!!

The efficiency is Pout/Pin ... :cheers:

Lynxsteam · « **Reply #192 on:** June 27, 2012, 02:37:29 PM »

Below is a schematic of the LJL 5.0. I have moved through many stages of development gaining brightness from the bulbs and reducing power with each step. I will send this design off for testing this week, but wanted to get the design out there for you to replicate and independently test.
The proportions and turns ratio are important. You can make a smaller version with 30 awg 5" long, bell wire primary, total turns secondary 1100, primary 110.

The advantages of this newest version are multiple bulbs up to 3 amps, high brightness, dimmability power saving mode, no ringing, can run continuously with correctly sized 12 v solar panel.

I will post a "how to" video soon. The are some simple ways you can wind these coils very quickly without special tools. Wiring them up is straight forward and fairly simple.

Lynxsteam · « **Reply #193 on:** June 27, 2012, 02:44:53 PM »

Larger version

JouleSeeker · « **Reply #194 on:** June 28, 2012, 12:01:41 AM »

Thanks for posting these schematics, Lynxsteam!

I also much enjoyed your latest vid... I have a question, though -- how did you manage to light two bulbs with just a small 9V battery running your LJL? They seem very bright for the current and voltage which a 9V battery can deliver (considering internal resistance) - any further explanation for how you did it?

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