Donald Smith Devices too good to be true

[level]

curious if anyone has reports/results from trials with steve jacksons open source mini tesla coil project.

This project is based on Konstantin Meyl's demo devices (which you can purchase as kits from Meyl's web store), but Meyl is charging a lot of money for his kits. It is very simple however, just two pancake coils which also have primary windings, and some metal spheres, and a simple fullwave bridge rectifier and filter cap connected to the receiver coil. I haven't built this exact setup with the flat pancake coils, but I did a quick setup using regular tesla coils just to see for myself how it works, and I was able to confirm that this does work.

You can power it with an ordinary signal gnerator, so it is a fairly easy project to build and test with. The tricky part is getting the two coils very close to the same resonance frequency. When I can find the time, I want to try the experiment again using pancake coils, and I want to test the effect where this type of power transmission can apparently pass into a faraday cage without any problem to the receiver coil. I think it is interesting as well that on Meyl's device he says the longitudinal wave transmission effect occurs at the second resonance point at around 7 MHz, but apparently it doesn't work the same at the first resonant point around 4 MHz or so.

[level]

nice job buddy, it really is a great circuit, and it could make any spark gap setup into solid state like the GeGen pancake thingy

btw how do you post pics so huge like that? im still an untrained forum user

Yeah, it looks like a very useful circuit since it automatically tunes itself to the resonant frequency of the transformer you are driving. I didn't do anything to make the picture big. It just happens to be a very large picture.

[mr.clean]

Yeah, it looks like a very useful circuit since it automatically tunes itself to the resonant frequency of the transformer you are driving. I didn't do anything to make the picture big. It just happens to be a very large picture.

yeah im impressed, and i read in other places that this Mazzilli circuit has driven a KW thru it im guessing you'd want to use the highest input DC voltage possible to keep any heat down.

and another thing i noticed was depending on how well you choose cap and coil, can reduce open circuit current draw almost to nothing at idle (essentially showing the losses)

[thaelin]

This is also the type of circuit that is used as an induction furnace. Just remember not to put anything in the center of the primary then. It will change the L and heat it up drawing lots of amps.
Rate your fets at about 5 times the input voltage too.

@ MC: This is where I am at right now. This is just a super high amp osc that survives. Check your impedance match across L1 to l2 and to the load.

thay

[Dave45]

The automatic resonance between the coil and cap and the simplicity makes this circuit very interesting, and there are ways to pull energy from this other than induction, like collecting the bemf.

But I think the bemf acts as a buffer helping to control the oscillation so not sure what this would do.
Using it on the bitt is a great idea, will be interesting to see your results.
The heating of the core is caused by alternating fields, switching directions in the core, if wound right where the coils dont change polarity, as in a dc field the core should not get hot.

MrClean did you make a vid of the levitating pancake coil, that would be interesting to see.

[janost]

The automatic resonance between the coil and cap and the simplicity makes this circuit very interesting, and there are ways to pull energy from this other than induction, like collecting the bemf.

But I think the bemf acts as a buffer helping to control the oscillation so not sure what this would do.
Using it on the bitt is a great idea, will be interesting to see your results.
The heating of the core is caused by alternating fields, switching directions in the core, if wound right where the coils dont change polarity, as in a dc field the core should not get hot.

MrClean did you make a vid of the levitating pancake coil, that would be interesting to see.

That circuit works even better with caps on the secondary instead of a short like I do with the ignitioncoil.

[mr.clean]

This is also the type of circuit that is used as an induction furnace. Just remember not to put anything in the center of the primary then. It will change the L and heat it up drawing lots of amps.
Rate your fets at about 5 times the input voltage too.

@ MC: This is where I am at right now. This is just a super high amp osc that survives. Check your impedance match across L1 to l2 and to the load.

thay

yeah its a very proven circuit, im using irfp450's MosFets which should be alright here up to 200 watts or so, not that i ever plan to use that much input, but its a nice margin. i say that because the PVM500 resonant driver i have is rated over 200 watts and uses the virtually identical circuit.

ok and i was wondering about that matching impedance, its my own ignorance, but other that tuning L and C for F, what would the steps be regarding measuring R ?

[mr.clean]

The automatic resonance between the coil and cap and the simplicity makes this circuit very interesting, and there are ways to pull energy from this other than induction, like collecting the bemf.

But I think the bemf acts as a buffer helping to control the oscillation so not sure what this would do.
Using it on the bitt is a great idea, will be interesting to see your results.
The heating of the core is caused by alternating fields, switching directions in the core, if wound right where the coils dont change polarity, as in a dc field the core should not get hot.

MrClean did you make a vid of the levitating pancake coil, that would be interesting to see.

i could do a vid of the "Flying Pancake"
but the thing is... i really didnt see overunity with it, but i do think there is something special about bifilar windings a la Tesla

yeah i'll do a vid of that and with my new 1050watt light display (going to make it higher) but it draws about 1080 watts lol, i'll do what i can

[mr.clean]

thats why ive switched basically make a DC circuit to drive a higher freq and try it all again, and could apply similar circuits for anything you'd want to drive with low RF

[mr.clean]

speaking of DC and HV....

anyone see what Siemens Electric Co is doing in China... ?

(still using cables, but its a start)

Tesla style Ultra High Volt DC (lightning) Super Grid, as we speak
What is Ultra High Voltage DC (UHV DC)? - YouTube

Check out the Massive Size of these toroids and facilities

[thaelin]

Another thing about Don's NST setup is L2 has a cap across only half of it. But the whole coil is used. Everything seems to say to me "frequency step down" because the induced signal will run the full length of the coil as well as the capped half.
Just me?

[kenssurplus]

Hi All,

Just a quick update on my efforts. I did further testing with my variable rotary capacitor, and the results are disapointing.

There is electrostatic induction happening with my steup, but unfortunately the spacing between plates aford only a limited voltage before there is breakdown (ie 6.5 kv for about 1/8 to 1/4 inch spacing). This means that to increase the capacitance to modulate the output better but keping the same voltage, then the plates need to be much larger in diameter (on the order of a meter or so) or many more plates on the same shaft. Niether of which I am prepared to do at this time. I found that this rotary capacitor setup does behave as a wimhurst machine to a small degree inducing about 5 to 13 volts with no input voltage applied (just rotating), but does not output enough amperage to make it worthwhile to pursue any farther.

I guess it is back to using the RLC method with a step-down transformer.

[Dave45]

How to Make a Bi-Toroid Transformer and Exceed 100 Percent Efficien...

[mr.clean]

hi mr clean.your back.i don't know if you have detailed your pancake coil construction here previously.do you have any preferences when connecting leads to coils and caps to coils.cheers.

hehe yeah i took a small break from here, but never gone.

are you referring to the Smith primary?
i have tried about all there is for that and have settled on this...


but im really focussing on Kapanadze and the BiTT right now to be honest, as well as the CapIndRes/Larsko's ferrite tube "amazing" JT to make it run on 12v rather than 1.2v, and see what happens

[mr.clean]

hi mr clean.your back.i don't know if you have detailed your pancake coil construction here previously.do you have any preferences when connecting leads to coils and caps to coils.cheers.

hehe yeah i took a small break from here, but never gone.

are you referring to the Smith primary?
i have tried about all there is for that and have settled on this...
Imageshack - imagenxpa.jpg

but im really focussing on Kapanadze and the BiTT right now to be honest, as well as the CapIndRes/Larsko's ferrite tube "amazing" JT to make it run on 12v rather than 1.2v, and see what happens