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Author Topic: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison  (Read 524042 times)

Koen1

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #90 on: February 27, 2008, 02:31:11 AM »
Hey cool, we've got a gem cutter with us  ;D

@Sutra, all of the mixes I make contain water, some very little, some more.
And until now I haven't heated my mixes any hotter than 180 degrees.
But then again, quite a few of my mixes contain chemical compounds that
react with eachother and the water facilitates this. Then I boil off and evaporate
out the rest, either in an oven or on a stove/heater.

Interesting experiment you've got planned there!
I can't wait to hear how it worked out. :)

Hey, by the way, do you (or anyone else?) have any tips on how to crush
rocks into powder? I've been using powdered or granular ingredients, but I'd
like to try some agate and tourmalin in the mix and I don't really have a
rock grinding machine lying around... I've tried a few simple ways like a large
pair of plyers, or just slammingthem with a hammer, but that doesn't work well...
Hmmm... just thought of something... "Will it blend?" ;D

cheers,
Koen

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #91 on: February 27, 2008, 03:12:36 AM »
G'day all,

@Koen: I have a very efficient rock grinder..... me  ;D ;D,  I use a large pestle and mortar that I used to powder herbs in.
It's a bit time consuming but the end result is a fine powder. 0.5 micron particle size is easily achievable. However be careful when crushing pyrites, it has a tendancy to shatter into sharp micro shards so eye protection is advised.

The harder rocks get the hammer treatment then I finish them off in the bowl. ;D...... Don't use a food mixer, they don't like it, well at least mine didn't.

@Sutra: Do you know of any mixes that are combined and set in the dry state or with any other liquid? As Koen said, a certain amount of water is usually needed.

@jeanna:    ;D

see yer later

Ian

jeanna

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #92 on: February 27, 2008, 07:14:52 AM »
@jeanna: As our cement expert  ;D what do you think about Sutra's info?

Catch you all later.

Ian
Actually, I had 2 thoughts as I read this interesting post.
1- Sutra, Have you checked out the geopolymer.org site? If you have not, you may get some useful information, much ofwhich uses similar materials to what you are using. The main advantage to davidovits' methods (if you can work them out) is that they happen at the temperatures of a warm day.

2- Sutra has suggested something similar to what I mentioned a bit ago, but no one commented on which was that the use of a pulsed magnetic field (pulsed is important- not a permanent magnet) is capable of inducing electricity in something. I think this is a worthy thing to attempt, rather than to force the voltage directly into the material, why not try to induce it?

high voltage , short pulses.

jeanna

Koen1

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #93 on: February 27, 2008, 09:45:32 AM »
@Ian: I was thinking of getting a pressure canner or something of the sort,
and just "squeezing" them into smaller fragments. Then, when it's granular,
I could indeed try the mortar.

@Jeanna: Indeed, I was also thinking that the mix in that link sounds very
similar to several geopolymers. And not too different from some of the mix
recipes I worked out...
As for the high voltage and/or magnetic field pulses... Wouldn't you know,
I happen to have a 1kV pule generator which I'm planning to hook up
soon... ;D

sutra

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #94 on: February 27, 2008, 10:11:08 AM »
Hi,
i think that the problem of a low amperage an voltage output should be due to a bad alignment of the conductive platlets.....crystallisation through evaporation garantee the structure but not the polarity's alignment.....That's the hard one.

400?C? the old, ancient method of heat up things.....fire...and a small bead of lead to check T....

will it work??  I'll see soon anough...

Ciao ;-)

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #95 on: February 27, 2008, 11:54:51 AM »
Good morning or evening wherever you are.

@Sutra:  You are correct, crystalization of the mix does produce a very robust structure and if left to dry on it's own produces very low outputs. The process requires a polarizing voltage while the mix is crystalizing, to align the platelets. Simple in theory but there are limitations.

@ Koen: would you like to share your polarization diagrams, they illustrate very nicely the challenge we have.

In a round about way I'll use jeanna's idea of pulsing a mix but I'll do it with my Tesla coil, high voltage high frequency, and see if I can get some sort of polarization through a standing wave effect.
I'm pretty much tooled up to do this now.

What we need people, is a Ball Mill. Which reminds me, Sutra do you tumble stones?

It's late, and I'm buggered  ;D  so I'll catch you all later..

May all our endevours be POTENTIALLY rewarding  ;D ;D

Ian

sutra

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #96 on: February 27, 2008, 12:39:15 PM »
Yes, I do tumble stones....it takes weeks...

sutra

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #97 on: February 27, 2008, 02:21:16 PM »
For all:

I may be wrong but my idea consists in using borax as rigid material in which embed microscopic quartz crystals sorrounded by graphite platlets orientated thanks to magnetically "impressed" iron oxides (hematite), through strong magnetic pulses . I want to try this building a cell big as bottle metal cork with several different mixtures, using see sand: washed and trated with muriatic acid to remove all little shells flakes (CaCO3 could react with Si and C forming CaSiO2 + CO2 and Fe metallic...just like what happens extracting pure iron from rocks).

I don't know other ways to crush rock than mortar and pestle unless you have a sintered diamond faceting lap at hands.... ;D
Try with a tumbler...it takes weeks, but it does the job completely alone...you'll have to sieve carefully the sludge to separate the grit..


For Ian: I thought of other non water based mixtures but i really think they wouldn't be as rigid as the right one shoud be...That's why I'm thinking of borax: it melts at low temperatures and it has a glass-like consistancy once cooled
.
As other rigid hardening mixtures an interesting one could be the bi-component resin (it is insulant though) used to fill the outdoor cable couplings...
But not including seriously high temepratures, nothing better popps in my head yet.

For Jenna: thanks for the indication

Talk to you soon guys.

Ciao

Sutra

jeanna

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #98 on: February 27, 2008, 05:45:19 PM »
In a round about way I'll use jeanna's idea of pulsing a mix but I'll do it with my Tesla coil, high voltage high frequency, and see if I can get some sort of polarization through a standing wave effect.

Ian
Actually not so round about at all. I woke up this morning thinking of drawing a diagram for clarity. I learned about this when I got a cert for using the PAP-IMI machine, which is a machine that delivers a pulsed mag field to something (a person  ;) etc.) and that pulsed field induces a charge inside which would otherwise skim the surface.

I drew the diagram using a tesla coil, (because I knew you had one, Ian ) but I am sure anything that delivers the spark to the bolt will do. A wimhurst machine, maybe. (with the PAP-IMI it was just a spark produced by a powerful transformer using the mains.)

So, in words then,

The spark hits the bolt, then the charge and the magnetic field travel down the wire to the loop, from the loop the mag field is directed both up and down perpendicular to the plane of the loop. It returns to the system somehow, I better not guess that part ;D. but the next pulse comes with the next spark etc.

So, here is a drawing of that:

jeanna

Pirate88179

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #99 on: February 27, 2008, 05:54:55 PM »
@ All:

Some of you may already be doing this but, whenever I want to crush rocks, minerals or ceramics, I just take an old T-shirt and place the material (wrap it up) in the shirt.  I then beat it with a hammer and it breaks up nicely into whatever size, give or take, that I want.  Still wear eye protection but it keeps the shrapnel contained.  It will make a pretty fine dust if you keep working on it.  Then, as previously suggested, you can transfer the material to the mortar and pestle.  you don't lose much material this way.  Hope this helps some of you.  Interesting work over here.

Bill

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #100 on: February 27, 2008, 11:11:27 PM »
G'day all,

@pirate: These experiments are costing me a fortune in T shirts, I do however have an old pair of the ex wifes knickers, they'll hold a couple of boulders   ;D ;D ;D

Settle down Ian. ::)

@Sutra: I am thinking about getting a stone tumbler.But instead of polishing stones, use it to crush minerals to the consistancy of talcum powder. To do this, instead of using grades of carborundum grit, use a number of hardened steel ball bearings. This is the principle of a ball mill. But as with tumbling stones it can be a slow process. However the end product is a consistently fine powder in the sub micron range.

Your proposed mix is well worth a try. As for the resin based cells, I made a number of these a while back using 220 grade silicon carbide grit to increase the dielectric value of the mix. As a potential power source they are no good. But they do make very stable high frequency capacitors.

@Koen: Sorry dude, I made an error. Some where I think I told you sodium carbonate has a melting point of 34C, what the hell was I thinking about. It is of course 871C  :)

Ok , time to go shopping and get some more wire.

See you later.

Ian

Pirate88179

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #101 on: February 27, 2008, 11:49:56 PM »
@ Ian:

The ball mill is a good idea except, if you are milling quartz ( hardness of 7) or most ceramic (hardness of 9) the steel ball bearings would wear out and leave metal dust long before they abraded the harder materials.  We used aluminum oxide spheres which can be purchased for a reasonable amount.  That would mill just about anything you might find out in the field with the exception of diamond of course.

Bill

ian middleton

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #102 on: February 28, 2008, 12:54:46 AM »
G'day all,

Bill you make a very good point there. Thanks. I'll have a re-think. I suppose what I should do is try it with the bearings and find out what amount of contamination they produce and if they can be removed magnetically.

Do you have any experience with ball milling?

All the best

Ian

Pirate88179

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #103 on: February 28, 2008, 01:40:01 AM »
Ian:

Well, yes.  I was in the precision ceramic machining industry for over 18 years.  All of our machine tools were diamond equipped.  We did some ball milling but I am more familiar with it as that is how our materials were produced by our suppliers.  They have it down to a very scientific process in order to gain consistency such that their published material specs can be depended upon by design engineers.

Basically, what I know from my old geology days, and from my polishing experience in the ceramics business, is that a hard material will never be attacked or abraded by a softer one.  You could put steel balls in the mill for a thousand years and never even scratch the harder material.  Someone mentioned the rock tumbler.  Similar process and you will note they use media like al203, or silicon carbide, or diamond powder, or tin or iron oxide to "grind" and polish the softer material.  It is interesting to note that materials of the same hardness will abrade each other.  An example of this is the diamond.  To grind or polish diamonds, you need other diamonds.  Not a fast process when the materials are matched but, as in the case of the diamond, it is the only way it can be done.

These abrasive powders are readily available in a multitude of grit sizes and materials.  I would try to determine the hardness of the hardest material in the mix and choose a media that is much harder than that.  Again, quartz (silica) is 7, which is hard but soft compared to the media materials I mentioned above.  Glass is about 5.5 and most people think it is hard, which it is, but not really.  The hardness scale is a relative scale and you can see that quartz will readily scratch glass.  I hope this helps.

Bill

Nihilanth

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Re: Crystal Power CeLL by John Hutchison
« Reply #104 on: February 28, 2008, 06:28:06 AM »
So it would seem that I'm not the only one who's thought of using pulsed magnetic fields. Jeez, the one day I don't check the site, it comes alive :P. Judging by the information provided by sutra about electro-conductive ceramic, I guess I was right in that adding mechanical pressure would help :) (even if it's more than I can provide).

If anyone could create a pulsing magnetic field with an adjustable frequency, maybe specific frequencies would have a better effect. I know it's horribly cliche, but I was thinking of the Schuman resonance when it came to mind.