Donald Smith Devices too good to be true

[Dwane]

Re images:

Hello Tswift,

I am mindful of Walter Russell's position of the influence of Vortices in almost all areas of matter and life. Having looked at these extra high speed captures of your image, I still think that the set up you have followed has enabled you to witness a vortex being produced. Whether I am extrapolating too much I am not sure.

There is a corollory to the BEMF spike here, and which might be a component of your phenomenon. I have always though that the BEMF spike that we seek to harness is as a result of the elasticity of the electrons within the wire returning to an equilibrium. Its just that they all seem to re-adjust simulaneously and together, thus producing an additive magnified pulse that is greater than the initial force that altered their orbits. Now that is a simple way to view the negative spike. Whether it is part of your phenomenon I could not say.

On a different note, Standard waves are directly related to a length of wire and the calculation to its wavelength. With the tabletop device replication of Don's that I am working on, I am having difficulty relating the concept of the standard wave and the very short lengths of wire I am using and the low frequencies that I am working with. Therefore, would I be correct in assuming that a coil wound from a know length of wire and its attributed wavelength, its wavelength would not change if directly wound as a coil - allowing for a small capacitance within the winding?

Thanks for the extra images

Dwane

[p75213]

Hello Tswift,

On a different note, Standard waves are directly related to a length of wire and the calculation to its wavelength. With the tabletop device replication of Don's that I am working on, I am having difficulty relating the concept of the standard wave and the very short lengths of wire I am using and the low frequencies that I am working with. Therefore, would I be correct in assuming that a coil wound from a know length of wire and its attributed wavelength, its wavelength would not change if directly wound as a coil - allowing for a small capacitance within the winding?

Thanks for the extra images

Dwane

Hi Dwayne,
If the wire is less than 1/4 of the wavelength is it still relevant? According to Richard Quicks patent (mentioned in the Smith pdf) the wire should not be less than 1/4 of the wavelength to carry the standing wave. If your working with low frequencies I cant see how your wire would satisfy this critera. Even at 500kHz the 1/4 wavelength is 150 mts.

[Dwane]

Hi Dwayne,
If the wire is less than 1/4 of the wavelength is it still relevant? According to Richard Quicks patent (mentioned in the Smith pdf) the wire should not be less than 1/4 of the wavelength to carry the standing wave. If your working with low frequencies I cant see how your wire would satisfy this critera. Even at 500kHz the 1/4 wavelength is 150 mts.

I know, and that is of concern to me. My winding L1 is 1 meter length. L2 3.587 meters. Therefore, I pose the question regarding capacitance and the Standing wave. As, in the smith.pdf, time is spent discussing the Standing waves, one has to question why and how to achieve one and in conjunction with an L/C component! Especially given the rudimentary nature of the arithmetic in relation to wavelength and length of wire. Therefore, either the standing wave is a Red Herring, or it is able to be manipulated, as per say a capacitor. Perhaps, the oscillations are very high frequency?

Thanks for the reply.

Dwane

[tswift]

I know, and that is of concern to me. My winding L1 is 1 meter length. L2 3.587 meters. Therefore, I pose the question regarding capacitance and the Standing wave. As, in the smith.pdf, time is spent discussing the Standing waves, one has to question why and how to achieve one and in conjunction with an L/C component! Especially given the rudimentary nature of the arithmetic in relation to wavelength and length of wire. Therefore, either the standing wave is a Red Herring, or it is able to be manipulated, as per say a capacitor. Perhaps, the oscillations are very high frequency?

It's a good question, one that most of us have run up against while attempting to replicate some version of the Don Smith device. You can see it easily enough for yourself if you have a scope, just put the probe about an inch away from the coils while driving them with the HVM and a spark gap. You will clearly see the big oscillations at the lower LC resonant frequency, but also superimposed on it will be some much higher ringing at the 1/4 resonant frequency. It will be fairly close to what you calculate using the wire length formula but not exact, it would only be exact for a long straight wire with no end effects. For something like a 1/4 wave vertical ham antenna it's probably within about 5%.

The high frequency oscillations will damp out within perhaps the first half-cycle of the LC resonance and might be something like 10%-50% of the amplitude. So you really do have two resonances going on, one at 220 Khz in your case, and another at something well into the megahertz range. I actually took the time to tune a set of coils for both resonances at the same time, essentially the only way I found to do this is to use a spark gap to zap each coil separately to get the exact 1/4 wave resonant frequency, then trim one or the other coil down until you have either an exact 1:1 match or a low integral multiple like 2:1 or 4:1. Then with suitable caps you can get the LC resonances to match also. The bad news is that going to all this trouble still didn't make my prototype configuration produce the desired magic.

If you want to look back somewhat in this thread, this has all been discussed before (more than once, in fact....). I posted some better instructions for the exact experimental setup back in post #10835:

https://www.energeticforum.com/293939-post10835.html

I think (just an unconfirmed hypothesis, but based on significant R&D) that this is unnecessary. If you measure power transfer into the secondary and the cap bank, you can get decently good efficiency just by matching the LC resonant frequencies without worrying about the standing waves at all.

[ricards]

I know, and that is of concern to me. My winding L1 is 1 meter length. L2 3.587 meters. Therefore, I pose the question regarding capacitance and the Standing wave. As, in the smith.pdf, time is spent discussing the Standing waves, one has to question why and how to achieve one and in conjunction with an L/C component! Especially given the rudimentary nature of the arithmetic in relation to wavelength and length of wire. Therefore, either the standing wave is a Red Herring, or it is able to be manipulated, as per say a capacitor. Perhaps, the oscillations are very high frequency?

Thanks for the reply.

Dwane

Hi Dwayne,

You could use higher frequency (mhz range) to get a practical wire length, then use the sub-harmonic (khz range) of your chosen frequency to resonate your tank circuit, you can get sub-harmonic by dividing your chosen freq. by 2 continously.
an example.
24.7 mhz is my chosen freq. that would make 1/4 wire length to 9.95 ft.
one sub-harmonic of 24.7 mhz is 24121 hz or 24 khz close.
you can chose a standard capacitor
example. my chosen capacitor is 4.7uf at 24 khz I will need 9.26 uH coil,
you can then design the L2 again based on 24 khz.

it would resonate just not sure about the standing wave.
but I got a very good Energy Transfer on a very loose coupling at 12v-36v input at resonance I had then around 2 amp input, at non-resonance 4 amps plus(depends on input voltage and primary coil).
might be even better at higher voltage.

those were the numbers I remember. hope this helps.

[Dwane]

Unscrambling the mud pie1

Many thanks for the detailed response to the Standing wave issue. Clearly, the Standing wave is able to maintain its integrity.

What is important is that YES, I have too been getting "Mixed" signals on my scope. Also, being old the sync is not the best, and so the Clutter that appears is difficult to isolate. At least I am now better informed as to what I am getting: a combination of standing wave pulses and pulse from the L/C component.

Incidentally I did start to read this thread from the beginning, time is my enemy, and gleaning through almost 11000 posts looking for something specific is quite a challenge. Its not laziness, relative priorities!

Once again many thanks. I can now concentrate on tuning and pulse procedure.

Dwane

[tswift]

Can you dig it? Here's the next phase of my project, improving the grounding. I scavenged a heat exchanger from a very large junked window unit air conditioner to use as a ground plate. Maybe it's not quite as big as a truck radiator, but it's not bad. Copper tubing, lots of surface area for ground contact. I wanted one with copper so I can solder a ground strap to it instead of having to settle for a mechanical connection. Low resistance (and low impedance) is the objective.

I have also called around for local septic companies that do backhoe work, so far it's been hard to find one that will tackle a small job like this. Hopefully I can get it done for $300 or so. I want to get the plate buried at least four feet down, preferably more. It's money I'd rather not spend, but I'm pretty much all-in on this project already so what's a little more?

[med.3012]

I know, and that is of concern to me. My winding L1 is 1 meter length. L2 3.587 meters. Therefore, I pose the question regarding capacitance and the Standing wave. As, in the smith.pdf, time is spent discussing the Standing waves, one has to question why and how to achieve one and in conjunction with an L/C component! Especially given the rudimentary nature of the arithmetic in relation to wavelength and length of wire. Therefore, either the standing wave is a Red Herring, or it is able to be manipulated, as per say a capacitor. Perhaps, the oscillations are very high frequency?

Thanks for the reply.

Dwane

Hello !


In my opinion it's your choice how you want standing waves, very high frequency is one option or another option is to work with scalar waves since they are standing waves in nature, i just uploaded a short video to show you standing waves in 1.5 MHZ frequency , if they are electromagnetic waves the waves length is about 200 Meter, i also tested lower frequency of about 350 KHZ and the standing waves remain short compared the associated frequency !

https://youtu.be/krCbv2tR_pI

[Dwane]

Spark Gap Pulse

Hell Tswift,

Well I am generally a little bit further down the track. My initial tuning test of L1 produced 221Khz. Having read the link you supplied, I have spent some time checking the connections. First, I am unable to go directly into my spark gap from the N ST. Zero output volts. The NST just does not want to know. So I am back with the NST and diodes preceding the SG. Across the SG, I am getting a decaying wave measuring approximately 20us on my old scope. It is not a stable output flickers and jumps around and starts and stops. I Think I have found that with the .2uf caps that my L1 resonant frequency is close.

But, the biggest paradox is that when I completely disconnect one of the leads from the NST, the connected output increases in volume! Possibly the reverse of what I thought might be happening. Even changing the diodes and replacing these with new diodes does nothing. Back to the issues with electronic NST"s? I must say, I am not surprised that others' have had difficulties with the Tabletop device.

I have downloaded a Zilano pdf. Lots of configurations. The one that caught my eye was towards the end with hand draw coil that appeared to show three coils. This small circuit is of interest as I have previously experimented with three coils. Also, there is a video of Don - in two parts - with a simple explanation of how this is supposed to work. Simple is no exaggeration. However, one could not help being mistaken for thinking that he draws three coils: specifically in the first video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp1fxvNjGmQ&t=2s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW265RlFEeQ&t=10s

What think you? Or anyone for that matter.

Hmmm.......

Dwane

[Dwane]

Hello !


In my opinion it's your choice how you want standing waves, very high frequency is one option or another option is to work with scalar waves since they are standing waves in nature, i just uploaded a short video to show you standing waves in 1.5 MHZ frequency , if they are electromagnetic waves the waves length is about 200 Meter, i also tested lower frequency of about 350 KHZ and the standing waves remain short compared the associated frequency !

https://youtu.be/krCbv2tR_pI

Thanks for the demonstration video.

Regards

Dwane

[tswift]

Well I am generally a little bit further down the track. My initial tuning test of L1 produced 221Khz. Having read the link you supplied, I have spent some time checking the connections. First, I am unable to go directly into my spark gap from the N ST. Zero output volts. The NST just does not want to know. So I am back with the NST and diodes preceding the SG. Across the SG, I am getting a decaying wave measuring approximately 20us on my old scope. It is not a stable output flickers and jumps around and starts and stops. I Think I have found that with the .2uf caps that my L1 resonant frequency is close.

I'm assuming the NST you're using is a high-frequency 12V style unit? This is OK for operation but for tuning coils it's handy to have a 60 Hz NST and a variac so that you can dial up and down the voltage easily. If you don't need a big beefy one for building a Tesla coil then probably the cheapest option is an OBIT, oil burner ignition transformer. I have one that's rated 240VA, 10KV and 24 mA. I think it cost me like $50 from ebay. For tuning coils with the spark gap you need them separately, removed from your test rig. Then you just use either one of the hot leads of the NST/OBIT, into a spark gap, then into the coil, then to ground. An HV diode is optional but with the diode it will only ring on one polarity which might give more stable triggering and better traces on your scope. Using the variac you can up the voltage slowly until the spark gap is only firing once on each AC cycle (at 60/50 Hz if you're using the diode, 100/120 Hz if not). Usually once you reach the breakdown voltage of the gap (set by adjusting the gap width) then you can back off the variac just a little bit and still keep it firing. With it firing stably, you can put the scope probe anywhere near the ringing coil and get a good trace by capacitive coupling.

But, the biggest paradox is that when I completely disconnect one of the leads from the NST, the connected output increases in volume! Possibly the reverse of what I thought might be happening. Even changing the diodes and replacing these with new diodes does nothing. Back to the issues with electronic NST"s? I must say, I am not surprised that others' have had difficulties with the Tabletop device.

Yes, all true about the inverter-driven 12V NST's. The particulars and behavior vary a lot between different brands and models of unit. I have tested a number of different ones. Some have an internal capacitor and won't drive current into a load to ground, some have oversensitive circuitry for detecting overloads. Overall they're finicky. This is why for checking your coils it's easier to use a 60 Hz NST, the old style with no protection circuitry, just like you would use for building a Tesla coil... since that's exactly what you're doing with the Don Smith device. Other than the fact that you can't run one from 12V directly, there's no reason you couldn't build an operational Don Smith device this way. Don showed several pictures of configurations with a 12V-120V inverter, feeding a small neon sign variac, driving a 60 Hz NST.

Also remember that putting the scope probe within a few inches of an HV oscillating circuit will pick up signal by capacitive coupling, but it's only measuring voltage. If your spark gap isn't firing then there's no current, and due to less load the voltage shown will INCREASE.

I have downloaded a Zilano pdf. Lots of configurations. The one that caught my eye was towards the end with hand draw coil that appeared to show three coils. This small circuit is of interest as I have previously experimented with three coils. Also, there is a video of Don - in two parts - with a simple explanation of how this is supposed to work. Simple is no exaggeration. However, one could not help being mistaken for thinking that he draws three coils: specifically in the first video.

It is worth taking the time to study everything you can find by Zilano, unfortunately a lot of it is piecemeal. Yes, you have now discovered one of the biggest head-scratchers with studying all of these types of radiant energy devices, whether from Don, or Kapanadze, or Zilano, or others. Which is, apparently the radiant effect can be produced, under the right circumstances, with STUNNINGLY SIMPLE configurations with very few components. It's like my white spark test. No expensive fancy equipment is needed. Only the exactly right setup and conditions. Some have two coils, some have three, some have even more, and some even have none. Why is this? What's going on physically? By now I think I understand (somewhat) which is what I was trying to explain with my diagrams. But if I had it 100% correct then I'd have a working device and could prove it, which I don't (yet). I do however have a backhoe service retained to come next week and dig me a very large hole for an improved ground, and then I'll let you know how it works out....

[tswift]

While we're on the subject of tools and measuring techniques, I noticed that right now the same model Hantek digital scope I have and use is on sale for only $279 at Circuit Specialists:

https://www.circuitspecialists.com/h...-dso5202p.html

For capturing one-off and transient events where it's hard to get stable triggering, a digital storage style scope is indispensable. An analog scope is way better than nothing of course, but for any experimenters out there who have been waiting to get a digital scope because price tag is an obstacle, now is your chance. I use this scope for nearly everything and it has proven very robust even being next to high voltage circuits and spark gaps. Once or twice I've even had HV arc to the scope probe and it escaped without apparent damage. The ability to capture waveforms to a USB flash drive is also highly useful for posting on forums....

[Dwane]

While we're on the subject of tools and measuring techniques, I noticed that right now the same model Hantek digital scope I have and use is on sale for only $279 at Circuit Specialists:

https://www.circuitspecialists.com/h...-dso5202p.html

For capturing one-off and transient events where it's hard to get stable triggering, a digital storage style scope is indispensable. An analog scope is way better than nothing of course, but for any experimenters out there who have been waiting to get a digital scope because price tag is an obstacle, now is your chance. I use this scope for nearly everything and it has proven very robust even being next to high voltage circuits and spark gaps. Once or twice I've even had HV arc to the scope probe and it escaped without apparent damage. The ability to capture waveforms to a USB flash drive is also highly useful for posting on forums....

Good to know that the Hantek is a reliable unit. I have been looking at them I think the price drop might be due to a newer model which I have noticed on ebay - a 200Mhz unit. Now as we are talking High frequency, would 200Mhz be too much?

Thanks for the explanations on the NST. The unit I have is a CoolNeon 10Kv 30ma 30Khz. I shall look into getting another no fault ground unit.

Yes, I agree too regarding some simple circuits and the radiant effect. I think that if John Bedini had never been threatened, he would have also gone down a different path and into HF. There is some evidence for this with a series of experiments where he uses an air coil and a "decapitated" 2n3055(?). Very intriguing. Incidentally, as the main criteria for Don's high power outputs is HF HV oscillations, then it should be possible to use one of John Bedini's 8filar windings coil, as an air core unit, and a few power and pulse input alterations, to get a very similar HF HV High wattage output. And, possible better control of the radiant capture. I also think that John's ten coiler was a "Tuned unit" which is why his worked so well and other replications do not.

Edit: silly me the 5202 is the 200Mhz unit!

Regards

Dwane

[tswift]

Good to know that the Hantek is a reliable unit. I have been looking at them I think the price drop might be due to a newer model which I have noticed on ebay - a 200Mhz unit. Now as we are talking High frequency, would 200Mhz be too much?

Sure, for this type of experimentation 200 Mhz bandwidth is overkill. Even a cheap 20 Mhz student-class analog scope is usable, it's just that the digital scope makes it so much easier for transients. Also, who knows what the next project to come across your workbench will be?

Yes, I agree too regarding some simple circuits and the radiant effect. I think that if John Bedini had never been threatened, he would have also gone down a different path and into HF. There is some evidence for this with a series of experiments where he uses an air coil and a "decapitated" 2n3055(?). Very intriguing. Incidentally, as the main criteria for Don's high power outputs is HF HV oscillations, then it should be possible to use one of John Bedini's 8filar windings coil, as an air core unit, and a few power and pulse input alterations, to get a very similar HF HV High wattage output. And, possible better control of the radiant capture. I also think that John's ten coiler was a "Tuned unit" which is why his worked so well and other replications do not.

Well, you certainly have done some research! I know a good bit about John Bedini and his work although I have studied Don more extensively. It's clear that the same radiant effect can be produced more than one way, and John's way of using the flyback pulse from a coil can certainly work. It's not that different from me zapping a 12V gel cell directly from my OBIT transformer (dioded) through a spark gap, which definitely produced positive results.

Also, I wonder how good the grounding was at John's shop vs. that of most other replicators....

[tswift]

Slicing up a dipole

(in best Julia Childs impression voice)

Today in the kitchen we will be... slicing and dicing up a dipole! First, go to your local electronics store and pick up a nice fresh dipole. Really any dipole will do, but for illustration let's take a DC dipole of 10 kilovolts. Put the dipole on your workbench and let's put on our high voltage safety measures and go to work!

Now let's prepare a nice resistive voltage divider with 10 steps to put across our dipole. If we make each resistor 10 megohms, then the voltage drop across each resistor will be 1000 volts, and the total power dissipation will be 1 watt, with 0.1 watt across each resistor. It should look something like this:



Now we have an electron current flowing from the "negative" end of the dipole to the "positive" end of the dipole. But because in nature every action has an equal and opposite reaction, the electrons at the "negative" end of the dipole will be phase-conjugate electricity! After all, if your dipole is a charged capacitor didn't you charge it by removing some electrons from one plate and forcing them to the other plate against their will? So, poor things, their natural reaction is flow back down the voltage gradient until they reach their original home again.

This is a good start, but for this recipe we need very, very pure cold electricity! So let's divide the divider again! Let's replace every 10M resistor in the chain with 10 1M resistors. Now we have 100 resistors, each with 100V voltage drop across them. And again! Now we have 1000 resistors, each with only 10V across them. The total current and power is the same, but now that first resistor, down at the bottom of the chain where the electrons first enter and begin to work their way back to the positive terminal, has very pure cold electricity in it. Still not pure enough, you say? Why then divide it again, until you have only 1V voltage drop. Or 0.1V. Or however close you need!

Voila! Pure cold electricity, suitable for use in all type of overunity recipes! Cover and refrigerate or freeze.