@Captaipecan . why not use old car spark plugs? You can beg old ones at any garage that does servicing . They will last years . When you get them adjusted , enclose them in an earthed can to prevent stray RF radiation.

It has got me thinking, now that I have seen my battery increase in voltage, when the bridge was disconnected and my reeds were sparking themselves to death, I need to look into this further.

I come up with a small variation of the circuit diagram I posted earlier.  This time I eliminated the shottky bridge, and replaced it with spark gaps... Tesla would be proud, lol... If I'm thinking clearly, the small amount of resistance in line with the reeds will make it easier to get the spark to jump the spark gaps instead of the gaps in the reed switches.  If the gaps are tuned precisely, it may be possible for the reeds switches to open and not spark at all, while all the energy jumps the spark gaps instead and absorb into the battery.  Please share your thought's on this new variation idea I shared.  I think it may hold some promise.

Typically the solution is to put medium sized capacitors across the
arcing contacts. Capacitors sized to suppress the arc but not affect
circuit operation. Here is the thing; Those arcs represent combustion,
not necessarily oxygen combustion, to some extent and may themselves
be a source of energy in MHD form.

They really need to be fully suppressed in the long term. Lower
voltage then inductive kicks cause those arcs, and they start-up
when the switch contact gap is tiny. Sparkplugs need a much higher
voltage before they start to arc in air. Other discharge gasses might
accord some promise. Neon, Xenon, or Argon in the form of discharge
lamps across the contacts. But switch arcs can form even when there
is no inductive voltage rise at all.

:S:MarkSCoffman

My Orzy is doing the grinding thing again the trace below is across the coils of my 2 motors. The top trace is the Orzy. The wave compresses like that when it grinds. I put a stethoscope on the coils & the noise is definitely coming from there. Feels like there is a lot of pent up energy trying to be released.

Also, I see the  in the circuits. I see them as something that is slowing things down.

Look at it like this. Without the , the inductor will charge faster and higher. With the resistor it will be slower and less of a field build at the end of the cycle, where the bemf will also be cut down likewise.
Like how much voltage is actually getting across the coils after the resistor during a short pulse? If the reed cant handle it, use bigger ones that can do the job, but dont "limit" yourself with resistors. I think that is kind of going backwards. But thats just me. =]

I said this before about the voltage, why just us 1.5v? Just because Steorn does? If you went to 3v, replace the resistors with diodes in a forward conducting manor through the reeds, and this will be an extra barrier to resist back feed through the reed. Sure there will be a voltage drop, but at 3v, say we get 2.2 at the least. I dont see any problems with that.

Just thoughts that I am going to play with here in a bit.

Mags

I have yet to use resistors in my circuits.

Jim
I see that. =]  I am just throwing stuff on the plate from stuff I see otherwise. Ideers. =]

Mags

Sure. my comment was an FYI. With 3V what sort of battery? Alkaline still? My6v sla at 3v gave no joy. luvyawork

Hey Jim
Just 2 cells in series. Or more. It just interests me that so many just use 1.2 - 1.5v, AA C D  when 3 or 4 button cells or just AAAs would give faster test results in time also.

One reason that I can think of that the caps are not doing well here in replacement of the batteries is, the cap does not have resistance like a battery. With fat caps I can say yes to the resistors to limit the output. The cap as a power source, most tend to forget that the resistance is very very low and will dump way to fast. Here I would highly recommend a resistor to limit the output, and leave the recharge as direct as possible, diodes use at max. The resistor value will have to be experimented with but it may just do the trick. =] there may even have to be a zener across the cap to keep the volts down to a safe area below the caps max volts.

Now lets say the bemf is not quite as much as used, still, well that ratio can be very very close to 100% eff. Then all we need is just a hair of regular charge from the coils from the rotor to make up that tiny percentage and we are there. What do ya think?  =]
I have been involved with solid state ways of going about this due to if it ever works, the idea of a spinner in a cell phone for example might not be necessary. But I have gotten up to 97% eff just on just bemf. PWM power supplies can be like that. Now if I can put a few lil coils around the big coil to just capture a bit of field pulses produced by the big one, I just may be able to come up with that 3% or more.  =]  I dont have big caps yet to work with, but am looking into them.

Mags

hmmm quiet here now.  Was it something I said? Just asking cuz it happens quite a bit that I post a few things and then silence. But anyway....

Nope, just got off work.  Trying to catch up on my reading.

As far as the resistors, I have not used them either yet.  I am only referring to JLNaudin's suggestion to use 2 22ohm resistors in the original 1 set of reeds setup.  I have not the resistors that low of value to even try until tonight.  I grabbed some under 100 ohm resistors from The Shack today to try.  According to JLNaudin, the addition of the very low value resistors decreased the amount of current input, but did not decrease the amount being returned by much at all.  The lowest resistor I had to test with was 100 ohm until now.  And that was not working at all, lol.  All my test's are without resistors so far.

As far as what I plan to do with the spark gap?  Not sure yet.  I am just kicking around the idea so far.  I just know that when I disconnected the bridge while my motor was running, the battery was charging up, while I could hear the rotor change in noise due to bemf, and my reeds switches were about to cry, lol.

As far as using diodes to shunt the spark gaps, or capacitors to filter it, I'm not sure what I think of that yet.  I know when you introduce capacitors you can expect to lose nearly half of the energy going into it right off the bat.  I was using a shottky bridge to start with when I found that disconnecting it actually charged the battery faster.  Still not sure on the explanation for that one yet, but it's interesting.

As far as why using a 1.2v battery instead of anything larger?  I have been using larger, I just have not reported the results.  I've been using 3 volts, 6 volts, 9 volts, and 12 volts so far, and a few variations in between.  Tuning seems to be easier to tweak the results at a much lower voltage so far.  Once it gives the desired results at such a low voltage, I'll go back up in voltage and go from there.  But for now, the original Ossie Motor was a 1.2v and I've been trying to successfully replicate before I drift to far from the original and get lost.

First off, I'm trying to figure out what is wrong with my dual pulse per coil setup, there is a short somewhere.  That's what I will be trying to nail down tonight.