Joulethief SEC exciter and variants

[xee2]

For the last couple of days I have been playing with the exciter and experimented with various turns in the primary coil. All at the same diameter of 6.5cm. Resistor value is 100K. Results below....

Thanks for the detailed results.

[shaan]

For the last couple of days I have been playing with the exciter and experimented with various turns in the primary coil. All at the same diameter of 6.5cm. Resistor value is 100K. Results below:

@15 turns:
Minimum required supply voltage for turn on - 4volt. So a small transistor will probably work here.
Low current draw from power supply; transistor runs cool.
CFLs light evenly through the length of the tower.
Maximum CFL lighting distance - 15cm.
No plasma, but small and extremely bright spark when grounded wire touches the top of the tower (without sound).

5 turns(default):
Minimum required supply voltage for turn on - 9volt.
Medium current draw from power supply; transistor runs warm.
CFLs light upto 30cm away from the tower.
Minimum lighting distance - 3cm from tower, CFLs turn off if closer than this or touches the tower.
Most energy intensity at the middle of tower.
1cm long plasma to gounded wire. Sparks with sound.

3 turns:
Minimum required supply voltage for turn on - 12volt.
High current draw from power supply; transistor runs pretty hot.
CFLs light upto 60cm away from the tower(with 24V power supply)! Also many lights can be lit at once.
Minimum lighting distance - 10cm from tower, CFLs start to blink at ~10Hz and turn off if too close.
Most energy intensity at the Top of tower.
3cm long plasma to gounded wire. Very bright sparks when grounded wire touches top of the tower. No sound.
No insulator is an insulator! Current flows throught 5mm PVC/plastic and makes thin lanes of burnt plastic. The build-up of these black lanes can be easily seen. Looks like a tiny star is slowly walking over the plastic leaving a black trail behind. This is extremely funny and interesting. The top of the PVC pipe now has many random black lines, as if drawn with a pencil.

2 turns:
Nothing happens! No current draw. Probably too low inductance to start an oscillation.

Cheers...

shaan

[NickZ]

Thanks Xee2 and Slayer.
I'll wind the bobbin with the 12 turns and see what happens, and get the plastic ones later, when I can find some, as they didn't have any where I went.

[slayer007]

Ok, I got my circuit working now. It ran all night brightly lighting 6 leds, just using some ferrite inductors. Kind of similar to a Jtc. But, I got a couple of metal sewing bobbins, and am ready to wind them up. If anyone can let me know the turns needed, it would be appreciated.
I don't notice any difference in connecting the outside earth ground connection to the transistor base, or much difference in the tuning capacitor adjustments, yet.

Thats great you have your circuit running.But I would use plastic bobbins for your coil.And I would try about 12 turns for your bobbin to start with.

When I was using an earth ground or a virtual ground I used no L1 coil just the ground to base.
Going this route you can add a coil to the collector for the lights.

@Shaan Great looking exciter.And it looks like your having very good results with it.

[xee2]

I got a couple of metal sewing bobbins

I would recommend using plastic bobbins.

[NickZ]

Ok, I got my circuit working now. It ran all night brightly lighting 6 leds, just using some ferrite inductors. Kind of similar to a Jtc. But, I got a couple of metal sewing bobbins, and am ready to wind them up. If anyone can let me know the turns needed, it would be appreciated.
I don't notice any difference in connecting the outside earth ground connection to the transistor base, or much difference in the tuning capacitor adjustments, yet.

[shaan]

Hi folks, Hi shaan, thanks for sharing.
What gauge wire are you using on the secondary and the primary, thanks.
I have a tall cylinder pringles chips can i want to make an exciter out of and then use the 1 or 2 turn step down method woopy showed to run lower voltage loads and see how that works.
peace love light
tyson

@ shaan

Nice video. What are coil dimensions?

@ Shaan: Very nice, thanks for sharing, great start....

Thank you all for the kind words. Here are the coil dimensions:-

Primary:

SWG- 20
Turns- 5
Diameter- 6.5cm

Secondary:

SWG- 30
Turns- 1000
Diameter- 4.5cm
Length- 33cm

The coil will run with almost any NPN transistor. But with TO92 devices the maximum supply voltage must not exceed 3V. Otherwise the BJT will run into RIP mode.

I plan to build a full fledged tesla coil from the secondary. Not satisfied with just 1cm plasma!

[blumoon]

Coil calculator

Here's a LINK to calculate coil design. Better save the page, b'cause the site have limited bandwidth per day.

Does the frequencies of the exciter can be calculate too?

[xee2]

@ shaan

Nice video. What are coil dimensions?

[NickZ]

Slider:
I thought the one meg resistor was brown, black, black, gold or silver. Which is only 10 ohms, and my transistor almost fried. I kept my finger on it so it wouldn't go up in smoke, and disconnect it when it started to burn me. Your link helped. I'll replace the 10 ohm with the 1meg ohm one.
I still haven't gotten my circuit to work, either. I added more leds as a higher load, to try to avoid the earth ground, as I like to be off the leash, if possible.
I notice that we are both at about the same number of posts. Ha!

@ Shaan: Very nice, thanks for sharing, great start....

[SkyWatcher]

Hi folks, Hi shaan, thanks for sharing.
What gauge wire are you using on the secondary and the primary, thanks.
I have a tall cylinder pringles chips can i want to make an exciter out of and then use the 1 or 2 turn step down method woopy showed to run lower voltage loads and see how that works.
peace love light
tyson

[shaan]

Here's the video.

Cool Slayer Exciter with Cool Music - YouTube

[shaan]

My First LARGE Slayer Exciter. Running smoothly.

Details:-
Power supply:- 24VDC
Transistor:- TIP3055
Resistor:- 39K
Diode:- 1N4148
Capacitor:- 1nF
Primary turns:- 5
Secondary turns:- ~1000 (probably more than that, didn't count lol. The secondary was hand-wound; took 3 hours to complete! Completely rewarding... see the pictures.)

The secondary produces 1cm long plasma when sharp needle is placed over the secondary. Lights CFLs 30cm far from the secondary. I was totally surpised/shocked when it lit the CFLs for the first time, on my first try! That was with BC548 transistor. It died after 10 seconds or so on 9VDC.

This coil and the ghostly lighting of CFLs has become very popular among my family and friends! They all looked at it like "WHA DDA!" the first time I showed it to them.

I am uploading a video of it. Will post the link later.

Thanks everybody here! love...

[Slider2732]

I have to return to the circuit again, been building electromagnet levitators and other stuff. Slayer recommended 6V, rather than my failed attempt with lower...so will do that.

1 Meg is Brown/Black/Green/Gold

For nearly all circuits and old circuitboard salvage forays, the first 2 colours are in place of numbers and the 3rd is the multiplier. The last 4th band is the tolerance or exactness of the component (gold or silver band with gold being the best at 5%).
Here's one place that I often visit, quick and easy to work out colour bands
http://www.dannyg.com/examples/res2/resistor.htm

[NickZ]

Slider:
Thanks again for the info.
I'm having a sewing bobbin brought to me today, or tomorrow. I'll need to know how many winds and of what size wire to use.
What color bands is the 1meg resistor (100 0hm?), I can look it up, but if you can just let me know I'll be grateful.
I'm working on the circuit now. It still racks my brain, for some reason, but, in any case I'm hoping to be able to get it working soon.
Did you get yours working yet?
NickZ