Donald Smith Devices too good to be true

[Peculian]

Tuning

Hi Kajunkreations.
I do not know `exactly` how Don tuned his devices, but here is a hint:
Think of it as to be a radio receiver tuning to the transmiter

[kajunkreations]

Hi Kajunkreations.
I do not know `exactly` how Don tuned his devices, but here is a hint:
Think of it as to be a radio receiver tuning to the transmiter

Thanks, I get that part, I was hoping for a clear answer, the is so much misinformation out there. At first I read this and then I read that....

So I guess if it is radio frequency then dont tune to the nst.

Thanks,
Nolan

[soundiceuk]

Just to clear up the confusion.

I think we need to decide on some certain experiment that anyone with a working circuit can contribute to.

1. What is the best combination of position of spark gap, capacitor and L1 coil

Here is an experiment that people who can make transformers can answer.

2. Why does a transformer get hot?

Is it because:

a) They are not wound with a center tap, primary and secondary have equal CW and CW turns from center tap.

b) They are not wound with a center tap, primary and secondary have equal CW and CCW turns from center tap.

c) It is impossible for a transformer not to get hot


Whatever the answer is to these experiments will move us forward.

When my 2nd coil arrives this will be my goal to answer these questions.

Also, it is good to see experiments with flybacks too, so we can see how crucial the center tap is.


Farmhand, please can you tell me if I used your circuit and/or Blue Serge's/Nolans circuit whether a 17.5khz will result in 17.5khz up and 17.5khz down and a return of 35khz?

Don keeps banging on about 35khz in the 2001 lecture and in his documents 35.1khz is mentioned a lot.


Thank you MonsieurM for your input.

[dragon]

The NST is nothing more than the "battery" to charge the cap in the primary tank. If you had a 3kv battery connected to the cap in the primary tank, once the spark gap was breached, wouldn't it oscillate at the pre-set value designated by the cap and coil?

The only difference is the ability of the NST to maintain a charge on the cap. This is why the cap is matched to the NST, simply for the ability to charge it in a short period of time. Once you have a cap that will be charged at a given rate then you can match the primary coil to that cap based on the frequency of the secondary coil. The spark gap will run at the frequency of the tank circuit until the energy drops to a level it can no longer breach the gap at which point it is dependent on the NST to charge it.

You can charge the cap with HV solar panels to drive the primary, use a voltage multiplier circuit, an NST or any other device designed to provide the HV. The spark gap, capacitor and coil is a passive oscillator... all it needs is energy in the cap and it will run...

[Mr.Whip]

Hello everyone bare with me I'm still learning and trying to figure out things too. But on my piano when I strike a middle C its freq. is 261.626 when in tune . It does not matter how fast I can hit the key 5hz or 25k hz... No my fingers are not that fast it still a 261.626 with slight sub harmonics. So if my primary coil is 10mhz (its not) does it matter how fast my NST hits it. My NST freq is almost 28khz but I'm pretty sure my primary wanting to ring at 10 mhz (ITs Natural Freq.) at the first strike...???? Just like my middle C.

I'm using home brew bottle capacitors so I can unrap foil to make adjustment untill I can get a fixed value. I fried my Lowglow 12v NST yesterday Not its fault. My Bad... Waiting for from my 19.00 replacement from E-Bay. Winding a new Primary with TV cable. One other Question I'm usuing a lawnmower spark plug for a spark gap As I'm unraping my foil cap the spark gap stops turns too Plasma inside on the ceramic part of inner plug, And it makes my bulb blinding bright. Should I be trying to keep this Plasma at my spark gap ????

Thanks Randy W.

[the bob]

Wenrourushui is going to be a BIG help getting this Don Smith thread circuit working.

[Farmhand]

Farmhand, please can you tell me if I used your circuit and/or Blue Serge's/Nolans circuit whether a 17.5khz will result in 17.5khz up and 17.5khz down and a return of 35khz?

Don keeps banging on about 35khz in the 2001 lecture and in his documents 35.1khz is mentioned a lot.

Hi soundiceuk, Dragon is right, the NST is only to charge the primary cap, but
the higher it's frequency and potential the faster it can charge a cap, even up
to the point where the primary cap can discharge more than once per cycle of
the supply. I know this because I can use a supply at 85 Hz to run a spark gap
firing in the Kz range. What happens is the supply charges the cap in a
fraction of one cycle, the cap discharges, then charges again while the supply
is still applying a potential difference to it on the same cycle, so multiple discharges can result
from each cycle of the supply. An ignition coil using a low duty (short pulses)
probably won't be capable of multiple cap charges per cycle even if used at
low Hz, but an AC transformer with 50-50 duty and a voltage output well
above the breakdown voltage of the spark gap could. There are other factors
involved too complicated to go into in one post.

But usually at low power it takes a few cycles of the supply to charge the
primary cap. It all depends on the cap and the supply and the power used.

It could be worked out mathmatically how a given cap will charge from a given supply.

If you use one primary L1 and a CW and CCW L2 then the frequency will be
the same as the primary because both ends will swing together with the same
polarity at both ends at the same time, with a CW L1 and CW-CW L2 the ends
will have opposite polarities at the same time swinging alternately to each
other so the effective frequency will be double if the center tap is grounded
and used as the return with both ends half wave rectified charging the cap.

If using CW-CCW L2 both ends of L2 will charge the cap at the same time.

With CW-CCW L2 there will always be a portion of cycle time where the
supply is not trying to charge the cap no matter how much input power is
used. With CW-CW L2 there is no cycle time unused, the supply will be
applying charge to the cap for as much of the cycle time as possible.

DC resonant charging circuits are supplied by smoothed DC, AC is not required
for a spark gap, DC is what is generally required. Unrectified AC can be used
but it's not as easy as a DC circuit to use.

It's difficult to explain, those of us who experiment a lot will agree that what
is learned by experiment is too vast to ever explain fully, it would just take
too long. Say I do several new experiments in one night, I can learn things
that could take many hours to explain to several different people, it would be
impossible to convey all that is learned from one night of experimentation not
to mention what is learned from two years of experiments is even more
impossible. My understanding is based on a collective of all of what I know, if
a person told me part of what I know without me knowing the rest of what I
already know it might not mean much to me because of a lack of context.

It can be very frustrating, a lot of patience, thinking and rethinking may be required.

I think this is a real problem, people want answers, but when the answer is
given it doesn't make much sense to them because there is a lack of context.

Then the different terms and definitions add to the confusion.

I agree a very simple circuit to achieve resonance and observe the wave form
and/or effects would be very helpful to those just starting out, I know I could
have used it, I was very lucky I had some good help and direction from Cody.
I will always remember the help he gave me and how excited I was to see a
resonant sine wave on the scope and experiment with it. I started with a 12
volt solid state setup which pulsed the primary at the resonant frequency of
the secondary, that setup taught me a lot, it is strange but true Tesla coils
can teach people stuff, it's almost like they can talk to you in your head.
Problem is they don't start talking until they are made resonant.

Cheers

[Farmhand]

I'll try to explain a bit more about what I meant by multiple cap discharges per
supply cycle. It's still too hot to go outside and work so I have some time.

For a primary circuit utilizing AC with no diodes or other way to rectify, the
supply must be able to at least charge the cap and fire the spark gap once each
half cycle, and the circuit is different of course there are many different ones.

A DC circuit on the other hand can take many cycles to charge the cap
because the charges on the cap are additive.

If the supply can charge the cap and fire the spark gap on a half cycle with
the center tap as the return then both ends of the supply transformer can
spark every half cycle (two caps are needed in series with the supply or
otherwise separate) there are different ways to do it with center tap or
without.

I think what we want with this setup and what is the easiest way is to use a
parallel capacitor and a series spark gap with a rectified supply.

The thing is if the NST or supply secondary is center tapped and is made
"like from one coil" so both ends wound the same, and the duty was 50/50
when both ends are rectified and returned by the center tap the effect is a
constant pressure on the capacitor so it is charging constantly as if from a DC supply.

With opposite wound ends cap charge time is 50 % maximum, because both
ends are rectified positive to charge the cap at the same and they are only
positive for 50% of the time each maximum. If it takes more than a few cycles
to charge and discharge the primary cap you probably wouldn't notice any
difference, but if the cap charges and discharges several times every half
cycle there will be a gap in the pulses when there is no pressure on the cap
to charge it.

The L2 ends should be only half wave rectified and the center tap grounded.

Cheers

P.S. Try to think in animated pictures while looking at the circuit, it helps for me.

..

[jharmon]

Use Integer Harmonics

Just to clear up the confusion.

Don keeps banging on about 35khz in the 2001 lecture and in his documents 35.1khz is mentioned a lot.

Thank you MonsieurM for your input.

I believe you should do 35khz if you want 50Hz out at the end. He also talked about 30khz. That would be good for 60Hz out at the end. 36khz would also be a good choice.

700 x 50Hz = 35khz
600 x 60Hz = 36khz

Doesn't matter much, as long as your high frequency is an integer harmonic of your base frequency.

And if you are chopping up the signal in the L2 loop with frequency-controlled rectifiers, it probably won't matter much anyway.

If you are trying to do the whole thing with resonance, it will. :-)

Cheers.

[Jack Noskills]

I looked again at Tesla's patents about high frequency high current. There is a charge cycle for the cap, then discharge cycle in the coil. Picture below shows how I think this is in its simplest form, I omitted secondary for now.

Capacitor is charged from DC, there is only one switch that makes and breaks the tank. Resonance in tank occurs when current consumption is minimum. In practice this means DC supplies more charge in the cap when charge in the tank circuit has returned back to plate connected to +.

To tune in, frequency of switching needs to be adjustable. So, maybe a couple of MOSFETs for the switch and signal gen for frequency source as a start. Then turn the frequency knob like tuning a radio. If you put light/LED in series with DC source, then when light goes out resonance is achieved.

Do you think any reason why this might not work ?

The trickiest part is to make secondary so that it does not affect the primary so that primary can go on with oscillations. How to detect this ? Put secondaries output through a resistor and monitor current consumption in primary side. Once it does not change secondary is correct.

If you look at Don's pictures, you will notice that the primary almost fits between two secondaries. The ready made B&W secondary coil seems to be separated more than just the amount it takes to unwrap the winding for connections. This make me think it would be good to have one secondary setup so that it can be moved a little.

First we need resonance in primary, only then we can achieve resonance in secondary. For secondary we need to follow Tesla's instructions: same amount of copper on both sides, four times length of primary in each half of secondary.

Don't ask for schematics, I know next to nothing about electronics. If this makes sense, then maybe someone could draw circuit diagram of the frequency driver part so someone else might test. This is the simplest realisation I could think of how to make a resonant primary tank circuit and I wanted to put it up here for discussion. It should be possible to test also with lower voltages. So only untested, unproven theory for now.

[DilJalaay]

Hi guys see my Don Smith circuit

Don smith circuit - YouTube

Thanks

Nice work guruji, are u using monitor builtin diode flyback?? impressive
can you post your setup diagram please.

wishing you best of luck.
Regs,
D.J

[T-1000]

It seems that you are missing the visual component of a Capacitor

capacitor electric field - YouTube



a spark gap would affect this field in all logic (think shockwave )

They are also 2 poles of magnet!

Put coil between capacitor plates where core is 90 degrees to capacitor plates aligment:
+ ----C| =L= |C--- -
Then you may get some crazy effects when resonating this type of LC circuit...

I looked again at Tesla's patents about high frequency high current. There is a charge cycle for the cap, then discharge cycle in the coil. Picture below shows how I think this is in its simplest form, I omitted secondary for now.

Capacitor is charged from DC, there is only one switch that makes and breaks the tank. Resonance in tank occurs when current consumption is minimum. In practice this means DC supplies more charge in the cap when charge in the tank circuit has returned back to plate connected to +.

For secondary we need to follow Tesla's instructions: same amount of copper on both sides, four times length of primary in each half of secondary.

And this is your end circuit to one I just explained..

[Guruji]

Schematic

Nice work guruji, are u using monitor builtin diode flyback?? impressive
can you post your setup diagram please.

wishing you best of luck.
Regs,
D.J

Hi Jalaay thanks. Tried to upload scheamtic on youtube couldn't find how
Yes I'm using monitor flyback with diode built in.
Ok I will post the schematic here sorry it's a rough sketch.
JHarmon how much input is giving on your ZVS driver?
Thanks

[JohnStone]

Dielectric properties change with magnet field.

Just another bit of knowledge:
There is evidence that the dielectric constant changes with magnetic field depending of the material. Researchers focus on very special materials. I found hints that for medical devices (MRT) they build very special capacitors not being affected by magnetic fields.

I did not find any research on plastic material like used for capacitors but articles say that polar molecules (most plastics are polar) and glass - see leyden jar - (perhaps mica) show this behaviour.

The behaviour is not linear. This could explain why hard pulsed capcitors (= high currents) charge in an anomalous way. OU comes along nonlinear systems. There are certain points in the graph where there are peak effects.

Please recall Utkin (referring to Faraday / Mislavskij) regarding the magentic field inside a capacitor while charging / discharging the plates.

Nonlinear capacitors are known and in production but are sold to military corporations only. Same fate like Fogal transistor.

So we have the hint that the insulation material of capacitors might have a major influence. So please document the capacitor make as well and try capacitors of different make.

@T1000: This fits to your notion regarding caps inside a coil!

We know similar behaviour from magnetics. Bedini states that in a small gap between opposing magnets (north preferred because it is stronger) we get a sudden field with 4 times stength. This is some magick like an "counter" bloch wall. Apart from that a repulsion motor generates in the coil an additional repulsing field.
Same effect at adams motor and perhaps Ed Grey.

~o0o~
Different item but interesting:
1. watch
2. See post 2

~o0o~

[JohnStone]

.... One other Question I'm usuing a lawnmower spark plug for a spark gap As I'm unraping my foil cap the spark gap stops turns too Plasma inside on the ceramic part of inner plug, And it makes my bulb blinding bright. Should I be trying to keep this Plasma at my spark gap ????

Thanks Randy W.

Seems like Tesla "thorough adjusting" spark gap. I assume your plasma is silent (plese RE if not). That is no constant plasma - repetetive sparks above audible frequency. It's the right tuning .
Please give more details to the community