Donald Smith Devices too good to be true

[mr.clean]

Hi mr clean. You do realize that your circuit is just a common sparkgap driver circuit, right? Basically what you are doing is exchanging the primary of a tesla coil with a halogen bulb. In other words, you are just swapping in a different load in place of an air core transformer primary winding. These types of circuits are often grounded to earth ground, and that is pretty common as well. Many tesla coils are driven exactly like this. That's not to say that I don't think a sparkgap driver circuit necessarily can't produce over unity, as this type of sparkgap driver circuit is the basis of some of Don Smith's devices and kapandze's devices.
However, Don Smith described a simple tesla coil device in the 'bonus' videos which didn't use a sparkgap driver on the primary. Don Smith suggested just connecting a 12VDC NST directly to the primary of a tesla coil with no sparkgap and no capacitor, but I tried that and it does not work with my 12V NST, as a 12V NST does not seem to have enough current drive to do this. Maybe Don Smith had an NST with no short circuit or overload protection and which had more current drive. Not sure, but I really wonder if Don Smith actually ever even tried that setup to see if it would actually work. Some other things he has said were just plain obviously wrong, so Don Smith remains a puzzle to me. Anyway, my point is that Don Smith seemed to feel that the sparkgap driver part of the circuit wasn't necessary for over unity with these type of setups, but that doesn't mean the sparkgap driver circuit necessarily doesn't increase performance. It might...

hi buddy of course i realize the simplicity of this, it's been a few years of working with coils, Completely get tuning for resonance via fundamentals or harmonics or overtones blah blah blah....

i believe there is something magical about coils, but as good as i thought my output was while "tuned for resonance" was still less than now.

When i do get enhancement from coils (kapanadze) then definitely i'll use it, but i did not have it with my tuned coils.

However, it seems that if you let your load experience the ground, Not just a coil, then you get a lot more benefit.
i literally see 50% from NST and the other 50% from the Earth
And if output has lost any Punch from transferred around, then why do it?

the magic is the cap charging the neg side from the Earth.
putting 100% power from NST on other side of cap. and demand the Earth to provide the other 100%
and having a seemingly constant flow of power.
Not just charged... pop... charged.... .... pop.... like my double helix board

and the cap you use must be chosen, too big a capacitance and it wont have enough power by the time you need it, too low a voltage and you kill the cap

crude as it is, the spark allows this to keep happening, as there is no power without a spark firing the built up power thru the load

and you dont want just a continuous wave, that would charge very slow, and just limited to the NST power
it seems to need a spark as the make and break mechanism.

(but transistors / IGBT's could prob do it) as long as it can handle the flow of everything, but a spark doesnt break down too often

Oh ya i remember the bonus vid where he drew the rough pic and said "you dont have to know how to tune anything"
But i think he also drew a gap on the secondary "which limits the voltage to where you can use it"
i think i have those memorized
But actually yeah i think he meant to put a spark gap on primary or maybe solid state, but was only drawing a concept block diagram.
of course i could be wrong, but ....

...in part 19/19 of the 1996 presentation ( i think ) he said..."the device in the suitcase, the coils are done away with...im gonna do it this way for another 5 yrs or so with the coils, but i will eventually let out in different user groups"....

i think what he meant by that was that there are no Air inductors (possibly still transformer tho)
and controversial as it is, later in 2001 inventors weekend he showed what he apparently had in the case,....
.... an amcc-320 Metglass core, wound with what looks like Tesla patent 433,702 "Transformer or Induction Device"
driven by small NST and looking like a step down config windings.
anyway

my point is i think he ultimately did away with air cores when he wanted to drive serious loads, as have most others, not that it cant be done cause ive seen some good power with air cores.
but relies so heavily on tuning, and the result is risking transferring losses.

One thing i noticed, is, if you are perfectly tuned for resonance, you will see the exact same if you still hook up the primary as i have recently shown... with Earth suppliying all the NEG... still a boost... but my coils were 100%transfer at best... its the Earth that gives the brightness in either situation.

sorry to ramble, i hope to use coils again when i get a boost from them

[rosehillworks]

No, I was referring more to the fact that heat will build up slowly in the power resistor over time (like over 10 minutes for example) so if you leave it long enough the resistor can get pretty hot. Also, I am not saying that current can't come from or flow to the ground, as it no doubt will be in this configuration. I have been doing tests with the same sort of setup and my tests also show an increase in power delivered to the load when the ground wire is connected, but my points are about how much the power is actually increased and whether this is over unity or not. Again, there is no question in my mind that there is current flowing to or from ground, as I am seeing it in my testing as well.

I am also seeing results in my testing with tesla coils ,with and without ground connected, that I can't seem to make sense of right now. There may be quite simple explanations for some of the stuff I am seeing, and some of the stuff that is puzzling me might very well have to do with me just misinterpreting or misunderstanding what I am seeing, or overlooking certain things. It is so easy to misinterpret or overlook things when testing with these type of circuits because there are a lot of complex things going on.

Thank you for your kind reply. Yes these are vary dynamic systems,
and I hope together we can achieve a better understanding of them soon

[mr.clean]

...and actually i dont see any gain while using neg of an fwbr with ground, only ground on neg side, no neg of fwbr
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/5757/imagenxpa.jpg

[rosehillworks]

@mr.Clean

What do you think of this.

mcts.png

[level]

hi buddy of course i realize the simplicity of this, it's been a few years of working with coils, Completely get tuning for resonance via fundamentals or harmonics or overtones blah blah blah....

i believe there is something magical about coils, but as good as i thought my output was while "tuned for resonance" was still less than now.

When i do get enhancement from coils (kapanadze) then definitely i'll use it, but i did not have it with my tuned coils.

However, it seems that if you let your load experience the ground, Not just a coil, then you get a lot more benefit.
i literally see 50% from NST and the other 50% from the Earth
And if output has lost any Punch from transferred around, then why do it?

the magic is the cap charging the neg side from the Earth.
putting 100% power from NST on other side of cap. and demand the Earth to provide the other 100%
and having a seemingly constant flow of power.
Not just charged... pop... charged.... .... pop.... like my double helix board

and the cap you use must be chosen, too big a capacitance and it wont have enough power by the time you need it, too low a voltage and you kill the cap

crude as it is, the spark allows this to keep happening, as there is no power without a spark firing the built up power thru the load

and you dont want just a continuous wave, that would charge very slow, and just limited to the NST power
it seems to need a spark as the make and break mechanism.

(but transistors / IGBT's could prob do it) as long as it can handle the flow of everything, but a spark doesnt break down too often

Oh ya i remember the bonus vid where he drew the rough pic and said "you dont have to know how to tune anything"
But i think he also drew a gap on the secondary "which limits the voltage to where you can use it"
i think i have those memorized
But actually yeah i think he meant to put a spark gap on primary or maybe solid state, but was only drawing a concept block diagram.
of course i could be wrong, but ....

...in part 19/19 of the 1996 presentation ( i think ) he said..."the device in the suitcase, the coils are done away with...im gonna do it this way for another 5 yrs or so with the coils, but i will eventually let out in different user groups"....

i think what he meant by that was that there are no Air inductors (possibly still transformer tho)
and controversial as it is, later in 2001 inventors weekend he showed what he apparently had in the case,....
.... an amcc-320 Metglass core, wound with what looks like Tesla patent 433,702 "Transformer or Induction Device"
driven by small NST and looking like a step down config windings.
anyway

my point is i think he ultimately did away with air cores when he wanted to drive serious loads, as have most others, not that it cant be done cause ive seen some good power with air cores.
but relies so heavily on tuning, and the result is risking transferring losses.

One thing i noticed, is, if you are perfectly tuned for resonance, you will see the exact same if you still hook up the primary as i have recently shown... with Earth suppliying all the NEG... still a boost... but my coils were 100%transfer at best... its the Earth that gives the brightness in either situation.

sorry to ramble, i hope to use coils again when i get a boost from them

Hi, mr clean. You make a lot of good observations. I am also inclined to think that using earth ground may be one of the possible keys to achieving over unity, as we have discussed before as well. Also, since sparkgap circuits create a plasma, which, using 'conventional' atomic theory, is creating a so called electron avalanche effect in the area of the plasma, which greatly increases the amount of free electrons in the area of the sparkgap circuit. Again, using conventional atomic theory (which I know many people in the over unity and new science community, and even some 'conventional' scientists as well have issues with), when these free electrons fall back to a lower energy state, the higher energy they held as free electrons is released. Even if we are not using a sparkgap circuit, but are just using a tesla coil instead, the high voltage generated on the tesla coil will also cause this same sort of ionization to occur around the tesla coil, although likely to a lesser extent if the tesla coil is not causing corona discharges. If our circuitry is able to harness some of this energy contained or released by the 'excited' electrons, we may end up with more energy out than we are putting in. Don Smith seemed to think the extra power came from free electrons in the surrounding air, so that may be worth considering. Also, extra power may come from the earth connection as well, so over unity in this type of circuit may possibly come from a combination of both effects.

You really seem to know your Don Smith material. Also, yes, sparkgaps in combination with the right capacitor value can produce some very energetic discharges. Really amazing stuff when you really start getting right into it. Ok, on the air core transformer setup not seeming to give a good performance boost. I agree with you that using air core transformers can take a lot of fussing around to get them tuned up well, if you are trying to use them in this type of generator circuit. As soon as you change anything in your setup your tuning can get thrown off. Definitely not a plus if trying to use that sort of setup as a generator where you will want to have varying types of loads. Your approach of simplifying by doing away with the air core transformer for now, sounds like a really good approach to take. Optimize the driver part of the circuit as much as possible, and see what results you get, and sure, then you can always add an air core transformer later if you want to see how that affects performance. You are doing really well, so keep at it. Over unity may not be far away.

[level]

...and actually i dont see any gain while using neg of an fwbr with ground, only ground on neg side, no neg of fwbr
http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/5757/imagenxpa.jpg

Yes, I was more intending that for use with a 12V NST which doesn't have a ground terminal or center tap. It should be a more balanced way to rectify the NST transfomer output when using a 12V NST. Good to know that you don't see any improvement in your setup with it however.

[Dave45]

I think one of the drawbacks with this type of system is the electric company's will say we are stealing electricity from them as all transmission lines, power plants and substations are grounded. And if close enough you probably could tap into their system.

[mr.clean]

@mr.Clean

What do you think of this.

[ATTACH]12779[/ATTACH]

Hi buddy, yeah i think i know what you are getting at, and it would be sweet, i just worry about the battery under high voltage, anything sensitive would very shortly burn up, a step down would be needed, but very possible

As for the general layout, i usually need to put spark parallel, and cap in series, but it may work as you have it

[mr.clean]

I think one of the drawbacks with this type of system is the electric company's will say we are stealing electricity from them as all transmission lines, power plants and substations are grounded. And if close enough you probably could tap into their system.

Hehe maybe, but to say that would be to admit the free power source.
Unless you mean that they think we are actually using 60hz out of a pile of dirt (not the case)
But yes, im sure there would be people who would argue that in desperation to discredit.

[mr.clean]

Yes, I was more intending that for use with a 12V NST which doesn't have a ground terminal or center tap. It should be a more balanced way to rectify the NST transfomer output when using a 12V NST. Good to know that you don't see any improvement in your setup with it however.

Oh ok gotcha, yeah there's a noticeable difference, i just tried with my small single terminal hv driver, the diodes can go together as well, but definitely less juice than the centertapped nst.

I really cant wait for the smart people who really know circuits better than me can eliminate the spark.
I think anyone who has a solid state Tesla coil could do this instantly just by removing components from their build. But it should be pretty simple

it would be cool to see someone's 500 or 1000 watt Tesla coil drive a load using the ground as in the schematic

[Solarlab]

Mr. Clean's Thermal observations.

I believe bolometers are used to measure radiated power, i.e. they can be placed in a microwave waveguide for example to measure the radiated power. That being the case, they likely wouldn't be of much use in this sort of setup. You can get RF meters for measuring true RMS current and voltage, but with the high voltage spikes being generated by this type of circuit you might well risk blowing them. You can also get RF high voltage and current probes, but they can be a bit expensive.

My general point was that Thermal measurements are a very reliable and fundamental indicator of Power. Bolometers, Calorimeters, etc. are used extensively to determine input and output Energy levels (power gain or loss) especially when there is a conversion, or different parameters (frequencies, spikes, and so forth) are involved. Consider determining the COP of a Cold Fusion reactor for example...

In Mr. Cleans case, I believe his Thermal observations (input and output resistor temperature differences) are significant. Ohms law and thermal dynamics tell us that since the two R's are fixed value, and equal, the Watts, HPs, BTUs and so forth will follow throughout the calculations.

A simple way of looking at it - the primary objective is to compare Power Output to Power Input; power can equate to watts; watts can equate to heat; heat can equate to Thermal equilibrium difference, especially over a longer time frame.

And - Thermal is a more convenient measure when high voltage spikes (or RF, or fusion for that matter) are involved. It's more straight forward as well.

I can appreciate the fact that you can get power meters to measure pretty much everything, in any number of ways, and over the past 40 years or so of design engineering I have come to also appreciate their costs!

Consider this simplified series circuit:

Source -> 10 ohm resistor [R1] -> {Black Box Circuit} -> 10 ohm resistor [R2] -> Load

There is only a single Source, R1 = R2 = 10 ohm, then how can R1 be cold and R2 be hot? Possibly another "source" in the Black Box Circuit?

[Farmhand]

Hi Farmhand, This is a variable rotary capacitor (what I call it anyway). I built this to vary the high voltage at 60 hz into a step down transformer. It is driven by a syncronous ac motor.

There are two glass reels with (4) aluminum foil one eighth sections INSIDE each glass reel. Between the glass reels, there are two LP records together with (4) one eighth sections of aluminum foil on each side. These records are connected on a shaft with a bearing pressed into a plastic holder in the front of the apparatus. One electrical connection is tied to a bolt touching this bearing. The other end of the shaft is insulated by plastic tubing and is driven by a syncronous ac motor to drive the plates at 60 cycles per second.

Originally I had the capacitor plates as quarters but realized that I would only get 1/4 to 1/2 of the possible swing in voltage because of overlap of the two reels. I needed to have a dead area or open area that had neither front nor back plate covering the rotor plates.

During testing, the two glass reel plates were connected to the high voltage terminals of a NST in step down fasion with a meter monitoring the 100 VAC terminals to see if anything was induced. High voltage DC of about 10kv was fed to the central record rotor and was increased to the point of air breakdown and arc between the record rotor and the stationary glass reels. The other polarity (ground potential) of HV DC went to the case of the NST ground connector. I could not detect any voltage stepped down in any case through the NST.

I should have built a air core transformer with center tap to verify for sure, but I gave up on it and moved to another project.

I'll make a better drawing soon. I hope you kept it still. It is only an idea and I
haven't tried it yet myself but I don't see why it shouldn't work to some degree
I think there should be only one plate section on each static element,
It should be one quarter, if you use more than one static element they should be in parallel
with each other and same phase (placement) the static plate connects to positive of
the DC supply the negative goes to the center tap. The rotating element
should have two separate quarter plates opposite each other like butterfly
wings, each one of those connects to the other two ends of the primary.

Or the negative could connect to the static plate and the positive go to the
center tap. Actually that might work better.

When the two opposite rotating plates are positioned at 90 degrees to the
static plate there should be no plates opposite each other and so zero
capacitance, but maybe in practice there would be some, i think you're right
there.

Then when one of the two rotating plates is over the static plate it should make a capacitor.

Anyway I think I'm at fault for not explaining properly.

Or if two separate plates are used on one static element they should be
opposite quarters also separate and connected to positive and negative
then no center tap would be needed, but i'm not sure that would work as well.

I would use a pair of microwave transformers for the step down, connecting
them together correctly might take some thinking. Two transformers can make
a center tapped transformer and MOT's can be joined by the cores as well.

Then there is the actual capacitance, maybe it is way too small for 60 Hz.
Could you measure it if it still together ?

Cheers

P.S. Was the applied DC a Charged capacitor or fed from a rectifier ?

..

[boguslaw]

I think air core won't work with low voltage, only HV and high frequency.
There would be immediately problem how to step it down. I also think that Don used iron core and in one his document there was a flyback type transformer with iron core...

[rosehillworks]

Hi buddy, yeah i think i know what you are getting at, and it would be sweet, i just worry about the battery under high voltage, anything sensitive would very shortly burn up, a step down would be needed, but very possible

As for the general layout, i usually need to put spark parallel, and cap in series, but it may work as you have it

Thinking about what you said I remembered this site please let me know what you think. Thanks.

Multi-Spark Gap Experiments

[Tomata]

@Mr clean
Are you using the power from the wall? i mean the 230v or 110v ? Or a Battery ?
Because if you do use power from the line then what looks like you doing is bypassing the diode.So actually is not earthing your using but neutral.This is because the Earth is the neutral of the electrical company's transformer.

Best test to do is to use a battery so you separate yourself from the power of the electrical company and then use the earth.