Author Topic: Joule Thief (Read 6334380 times)

electricme · « **Reply #15000 on:** April 10, 2011, 12:44:42 PM »

Pirate at war with the Bees

Pirate88179 · « **Reply #15001 on:** April 10, 2011, 12:51:30 PM »

Jim:

I am still laughing!!!!!!! I am going to print that one out and hang it on my wall. Well done sir!!!!!!!! You captured the moment perfectly.

Bill

PS I am not up against a squadron, they are more like an entire air wing. But, not for long. I will enforce this No Fly Zone.

electricme · « **Reply #15002 on:** April 10, 2011, 01:41:15 PM »

Gary:

Quote from: resonanceman on April 10, 2011, 05:50:48 AM

Jim

I have never tried putting the primarys in parallel before.
If you put the primarys in series you will have a candy cane coil made with transformers rather than toroids.

I plan on playing with the same kind of idea tomorow.
I have a couple of camera circuits that are AA but only 4 connections on the transformer.
I also have a fuji AA that has 5 connections on the transformer. If the 5th connection is a center tap for the primary making a JT with that one will be a snap.

Getting back to the candy cane thing.
If you put your primarys and secondarys both in series it works for the most part like one big inductor with the an equivalent number of wraps

I do think you will be happy with what you find .......there are lots of possible combinations with candy cane coils........ one is to put string of primarys in series then try to light a CFL with each secondary

I look forward to seeing your results

gary

Actually I havent ever pulled the transformer off a camera board, and I can hardly wait for the cameras that are in the mail to me, when they get here I will be seeing what I can do with this parallel transformer idea.

If you manage to unsolder a hi Voltage coil, you will need to find the primary winding, it will have a lower resistance on the multimeter, the secondary will be a lot higher.

To make sure both coils are firing at the same time, they need the primaries to be in parallel.
The secondaries need to be in series, and I think the secondary ends you solder together, need to be connected to battery earth. This leaves you with just a single output connection from each transformer, it's these that you solder the CFL to.

My thinking is each coil can put out about 350 volts, add both coils together and you have 700 odd volts to power the CFL tube directly.

After a lot of dredging I found a hi voltage circuit with four transformers all connected with the primaries in parallel and the secondaries in series, take a look here http://kb3ewy.com:8000/old/images/4pack2.GIF

This will give you an idea where I am headding with this now.

jim

Pirate88179 · « **Reply #15003 on:** April 10, 2011, 04:47:54 PM »

Jim:

I think you are going to make us blow things up... ha ha! Seriously, I have always liked the idea of finding out what something can do, not what it was designed to do. Let's push it all that we can.

Bill

resonanceman · « **Reply #15004 on:** April 10, 2011, 11:43:11 PM »

Quote

If you manage to unsolder a hi Voltage coil, you will need to find the primary winding, it will have a lower resistance on the multimeter, the secondary will be a lot higher.

To make sure both coils are firing at the same time, they need the primaries to be in parallel.
The secondaries need to be in series, and I think the secondary ends you solder together, need to be connected to battery earth. This leaves you with just a single output connection from each transformer, it's these that you solder the CFL to.

My thinking is each coil can put out about 350 volts, add both coils together and you have 700 odd volts to power the CFL tube directly.

After a lot of dredging I found a hi voltage circuit with four transformers all connected with the primaries in parallel and the secondaries in series, take a look here http://kb3ewy.com:8000/old/images/4pack2.GIF

This will give you an idea where I am headding with this now.

jim

Jim

I have taken a few camera boards apart.......it is not easy to remove the transformers without breaking a pin off.
What I plan on doing now is snipping the circuit board away so I have only a little bit of board around the base of the transformer.
Then I just solder new wires to the existing connections.

I guess I will have to try a candy cane coil with the primaries in parallel..... all mine have been in series so far.

I do not agree that the secondarys need to be connected in series.......although it is true there are some problems with balancing things if you try to run them seperately.
MOST of of the power will go to the lowest impedance secondary unless you ballance things very carefully..... but you can get some useful things done with this balancing .......for example if you use a coil with 2 windings on it for balancing .... A switch on a coil connected to a bridge then used for feedback will greatly increase the inductance of the other coil on the same core.......giving you a way to switch high voltage with a small low voltage switch.

If course the whole circuit will still be live.........so don't touch it or you may become the new low impedance path for the current.

gary

electricme · « **Reply #15005 on:** April 11, 2011, 01:11:41 AM »

Gary:
I agree with most of what you are saying, but the most important thing to watch for is to get the phasing right when you connect two or more transformer secondary output coils in series (same with the primary as well)

If you look at the setup which has 4 MOT transformers it will show you what I mean.
BTW, the circuit is not drawn wrong, you can see there are 2 lines drawn (black) from the center of 2 transformers (inner transformers) to the iron lamination's of the outer transformers.
In the case of MOTs the start winding is secured to the lamination's by a rivet.

Looking again at the two inner transformers, the GREEN line represents a wire connecting both the lamination's which is part of the circuit, notice the Earth connection.

So in the case of 4 MOT transformers, they must be isolated from each other, and you must never touch the iron core.
To fix this live core problem you remove the "pin" and sleeve the wire and anchor it securely by using appropriate HV insulating material, then threadding a cotton strip around the transformer, to anchor the terminal assembly and aralditing it. There may be other methods that I am not aware of.

But I do not accept responsibility if someone does this and hurts themselves.
Search all over the internet and look for those posts modifying MOTs to see if there is a better method, I only use what works well for myself.

I like your idea on using a switch to connect power to the second HV transformer, you could switch the second TF on or off as a test setup to explore the differences in the outputs.

I read the transistor on the flash PCB is a fairly robust device and can cope with a few amps where ordinary transistors will let out the smoke.

I think we could solder two of these same transistors in parallel to double the switching current to the transformer primaries, can't see any problems using this method.

Has anyone used a transistor from the camera boards to drive the Joule Thief?

resonanceman · « **Reply #15006 on:** April 11, 2011, 01:59:21 AM »

Quote from: electricme on April 11, 2011, 01:11:41 AM

Gary:
I agree with most of what you are saying, but the most important thing to watch for is to get the phasing right when you connect two or more transformer secondary output coils in series (same with the primary as well)

If you look at the setup which has 4 MOT transformers it will show you what I mean.
BTW, the circuit is not drawn wrong, you can see there are 2 lines drawn (black) from the center of 2 transformers (inner transformers) to the iron lamination's of the outer transformers.
In the case of MOTs the start winding is secured to the lamination's by a rivet.

Looking again at the two inner transformers, the GREEN line represents a wire connecting both the lamination's which is part of the circuit, notice the Earth connection.

So in the case of 4 MOT transformers, they must be isolated from each other, and you must never touch the iron core.
To fix this live core problem you remove the "pin" and sleeve the wire and anchor it securely by using appropriate HV insulating material, then threadding a cotton strip around the transformer, to anchor the terminal assembly and aralditing it. There may be other methods that I am not aware of.

But I do not accept responsibility if someone does this and hurts themselves.
Search all over the internet and look for those posts modifying MOTs to see if there is a better method, I only use what works well for myself.

I like your idea on using a switch to connect power to the second HV transformer, you could switch the second TF on or off as a test setup to explore the differences in the outputs.

I read the transistor on the flash PCB is a fairly robust device and can cope with a few amps where ordinary transistors will let out the smoke.

I think we could solder two of these same transistors in parallel to double the switching current to the transformer primaries, can't see any problems using this method.

Has anyone used a transistor from the camera boards to drive the Joule Thief?

Jim

I can see you have been studying this for a while.
Are you planning on actually using MOTs?
If so have you thought of using a IGBT ( Insulated gate bipolar transistor )
They are expensive but they can handle some power.
I learned about them reading about how to make a solid state spark gap.

I do understand the problem of phase can create with AC circuits .
i have never really worried about it...... I just experiment.
I connect another inductor and either the circuit gets stronger or it gets weaker

I played with feedback and balancing loads for months a while back.
Most of my inductors were JT coils but I imagine that at least the basics apply to larger coils like MOTs

I have a different way of driving MOTs on my to do list.
It is similar to some of what IST was doing.
I was planning on making a small JT that would be used just for switching a IGBT on and off,
The voltage used for the MOT could be anything your IGBT could handle.
I got a couple IGBTs that can handle 900V so I am thinking 250 or 300V might be a safe maximum for input voltage....... assuming I never get careless and fire it up with no load......with no load I am guessing it would be somewhere around 2 KV and it would have a few amps behind it too

I am not sure how many CFLs it will be able to light.......I am guessing a few dozen'

I am just not ready to play with anything that lethal yet

gary

electricme · « **Reply #15007 on:** April 11, 2011, 04:56:39 AM »

Gary:

No I am not going to use a MOT on my camera circuit to drive a CFL.
I needed to explain what I was doing by adding another HV transformer into the camera circuit, as there were no information available in the JT forum or elseware, I had to go look for it.

I knew from my searches a couple of years ago where someone had successfully married up 2 MOTs, somewhere I have also seen on the net someone has done the same using 2 car ignition coils, they are simply high voltage transformers, they put out 15KV each, ha ha, now you can see where we might be able to do by combining the JT with the Camera bits.

All I will be doing is to use the small tiny HV transformer that comes with the camera boards, they need to be identical, because I will run into electrical mismatch with loading, resistances, capacitance's, in other words if it works one transformer will have to take more of the load and burn out or the transistor firing off the primary will over heat and burn out.
So there is lots to think about.

I read someone had placed a microwave HV capacitor in series with the MOT output, I watched a video yesterday showing this thing was making some arcs that were out of this world, they were able to arc a couple feet long, just by adding the HV caps.

This fellow held a insulated rod which had a insulated wire going back to the earth of the circuit, but he was taking it very slow and safe.

I won't be expecting anything like this to happen, in fact a 1mm spark gap represents 1000 volts, as the series transformer will put out 700volts, I will not even be in the ball park, but I expect the neon would go phutt, but the flash tube should light like a light bulb, ha ha.

We all know a single flash from a flashing tube looks like, it is very intense and hurts the eyes, imagine if it was going off at 20 cycles a second, it should look like a powerful search light, especially if focused by a 6 volt lantern torch reflector, take the 6v bulb out and replace it with the flash tube vertically in the bulb holder. That keeps it in the focal plane of the mirror.
Now if I put a much smaller HV capacitor in series with the HV output, I could expect some real energy to be there.

I made a special circuit several years ago doing just this, it was fed from the HV output from the hand wound JT secondary, and it could give a real punch if you accidentally touched the ends.

I'm getting too far and head of myself now, but it's something to think about for a project down the road.

IGBTs need to be turned hard ON and OFF very rapidly, if they aren't they will destruct, I don't know enough of the camera circuit triggering waveforms to see if they can do this.
I know the sharper knee in the wave form will give the very best HV output from the transformer, this will be the stuff to trigger the transformer to give a better juicer spark.

Bill:
Hows the bees today, whats the tally so far, you got any stings? Hows the air space there

jim

Pirate88179 · « **Reply #15008 on:** April 11, 2011, 06:04:46 AM »

Jim:

The bees are missing 10 of their airmen. Here is a photo I got off of the net of one of them...the ones here are more yellow but the size is about the same. I did not have my 1,500 volt stun swatter when I went out today and had to resort to hand to hand combat. I smacked one of them out of the air with my hand and he hit the fence hard and fell to the ground. I then stepped on him and....when I removed my foot...he took off again and appeared to be somewhat angry. That swatter does the job and they never get up after a hit from that. It is basically JT circuit.

These things are almost the size of small birds, ha ha.

Bill

nievesoliveras · « **Reply #15009 on:** April 11, 2011, 12:20:43 PM »

A schematic and photo of it assembled.
Found at http://www.instructables.com

Jesus

synchro1 · « **Reply #15010 on:** April 12, 2011, 01:20:48 AM »

Mopozco's TROS is wired identically to the Joule Thief. He notes his Joule Thief Toroid winding is a combination of 16 and 22 gauge or 18 and 24. The thin wire end goes to the Transister base and the thick wire end to the collector. The other ends are joined and run to the posative pole of the battery.

This is close to the wide gauge span chosen by Danial McFarland Cook for his magnetic battery. Mopozco runs two diodes one off each end of the coil base. Mopozco's aledging overunity with this simple setup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H14zf1LPIi0

His Fast Charger has an LED, Capacitor, and charge battery in parralell off the Collector and Emiter of the Transister. Disconnect the LED to charge. Nothing could be simpler!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyoHMEPukek&feature=related

protonmom · « **Reply #15011 on:** April 12, 2011, 02:59:06 AM »

@Bill, sometimes Bees are attracted to certain smells, such as deoderant, cologne, soaps, etc. I have never seen such huge bees as shown in the Hand picture.

@all, Has anyone seen Jeanna lately? I hope she is okay, but I cannot help worrying about her. Jeanna, if you are reading this, please post so that we know you are doing ok.

@all, the other day I lit up an AA Fuji circuit.....with an AAA battery, and it lit just as brightly as with the AA. Yes, it was an AAA battery. Do not know what this means...maybe you do.

Pirate88179 · « **Reply #15012 on:** April 12, 2011, 04:14:49 AM »

Protonmom:

An AAA battery is the same 1.5 volts as an AA battery, the only difference being the amount of mA hours so the AA will last longer, as will a C or even D cell...but all are 1.5 volts so brightness is the same.

Yes, they are large bees and they drill holes in wood like you would not believe. (That is where they nest)

Last I heard from Jeanna, she was moving to a very rural location and may not have access to the net at this time.

Bill

the_big_m_in_ok · « **Reply #15013 on:** April 12, 2011, 09:19:34 PM »

With respect to posted Reply #15041,

Yikes!! They are sizable, aren't they? Do they actually sting? There's a smaller variety that color in the Desert Southwest, especially in AZ. They dig nests in native Century Plant agave.

--Lee

Pirate88179 · « **Reply #15014 on:** April 12, 2011, 11:49:14 PM »

Quote from: the_big_m_in_ok on April 12, 2011, 09:19:34 PM

With respect to posted Reply #15041,

Yikes!! They are sizable, aren't they? Do they actually sting? There's a smaller variety that color in the Desert Southwest, especially in AZ. They dig nests in native Century Plant agave.

--Lee

Well, the ones here look more like a bumblebee in color and most are not as big as the one in that photo, but close. Everyone around here says they do not sting but, when I looked them up, it said the females have a hell of a sting. They are actually known as carpenter bees because they drill a perfectly round hole into wood and make a nest there.

Me? I am taking no chances on one being male or female...if I walk outside and one bounces off of my head, the battle begins.

Bill

News:

User Menu

Author Topic: Joule Thief (Read 6334380 times)

electricme

Re: Jule Thief

Pirate88179

Re: Jule Thief

electricme

Re: Jule Thief

Pirate88179

Re: Jule Thief

resonanceman

Re: Jule Thief

electricme

Re: Jule Thief

resonanceman

Re: Jule Thief

electricme

Re: Jule Thief

Pirate88179

Re: Jule Thief

nievesoliveras

Re: Jule Thief

synchro1

Re: Jule Thief

protonmom

Re: Jule Thief

Pirate88179

Re: Jule Thief

the_big_m_in_ok

Re: Jule Thief

Pirate88179

Re: Jule Thief