Joulethief SEC exciter and variants

[Slider2732]

Current measuring often causes problems and errors. The thing is, once you strike up an exciter, you'll have HV pulses travelling along DC wiring.
Powering from a wall adapter, you can use an AV plug and LED and see the LED light right up to the wall plug. So, the multimeter is going to see that HV as well.
Putting the meter in series with the Positive supply will give you a reading, but is it correct, if we consider the way that a meter can run all over the place inside an excited field ?
Another way, is to put a 1ohm resistor in the same place. Measure the voltage across that resistor and it will show the amperage (Ohms Law E/R = I), easiest with 1ohm. 50mV will be 50mA, but is subject to the tolerance of the resistor...5% will carry a possibility of a 5% error.
More info here: measuring current using 1ohm resistor. How? - diyAudio

[sorveltaja]

Conical coil + Exciter ?

Has anyone here tested that configuration?

I tried first the forum search -function, but it is somewhat frustrating, as it gives all the threads, that contain word 'conical'. Meaning, that you have to go through every thread, page by page, to see the results.

I have done some primitive tests on the 'slayer circuit'(at least, one of them), using cylindrical coil, and managed to light cfl's wirelessly.

Also the plasma stream appears at 5 volts(200-300mA), using a 'horseshoe coil' as an L2.

Transistor in the circuit is C2655, scavenged from now deceased device.

That's my basic setup.

I've managed to wind a conical coil to test it with that very same setup.

As always, picture(s) could tell more, than thousand words.

I'll see, if(when) I find a way to post some pics.

[NickZ]

I don't know of anyone trying a conical coil, other that the ferrite cores from the back of tv or monitor tubes. Those have been tried, but I don't know to what degree of success.

I've just maid a new Exciter coil, wound on a 1 1/2 inch wide pvc tube, by about 9 inches long. Great results, even though I still need to add more wire to finish the last inch or so of the coil. The wireless field is about 2 feet, and the circuit will work even with a 1 volt battery, and still light up several CFLs, a 15 watt round florescent bulb, and neon bulb. All the bulbs that I have to put on it will light, but not full on, yet.
Today I'll finish winding the last part of the coil, and do some more test on it later tonight. I can even see plasma coming from the output of the coil, and the RF burn is quite intense. I'm very excited!!!

[sorveltaja]

Glad to hear about the positive results, NickZ!!.

What comes to that conical coil, it is indeed harder to tune, when compared to a cylindrical coil, where you can make L2 also cylindrical, and slide it along with L1.

After all, this exciter -thing just amazes me. Just today, when testing that conical coil, which gives only a faint plasma, I lighted a small candle, just to see, how the 'pig tail' -end of the L1 reacts with fire.

Well, enough thrust to almost kill the fire of that candle.

How the heck can an open end of 0.2mm copper wire do that?

All that stuff goes way beyond my understanding. Nevertheless, I really enjoy to find things, that I've never known to exist.

[NickZ]

This is my version of the Solar Exciter Lamp. It uses the Slayer circuit, on a pnp 3906 transistor, 1 meg resistor, and 1n4148 diode. The tower is wound on a 1.5 inch pvc pipe that is about 9 inches long. It's running on a 9 volt battery in the video, but will be connected to my 12v battery, and small solar panel. It will also run off of my homemade carbon/aluminum cells.
I also made a very short video, as my camera battery is bad and 30 seconds video is all I could get from it. Sorry it's so dark.
Video:
Joule Lamp- Wireless Exciter Circuit - YouTube

[sorveltaja]

Here is the coil (in fact, the only decent coil, that I've made so far), that is in test at the moment:



That coil wire(~0.25mm) is wound around conical pendant cap(cup?). Not sure what it is called in english language. Anyways, the cap, that hides the pendant's electrical connections on the upper side.

Approximate coil dimensions:


Lighting the cfl:



The basic circuit, with an additional transistor:




I have no particular reason to use that additional transistor, just a thought, that it might halve the strain, per transistor. Just as using two power resistors in parallel.

That configuration seems to increase the output of the circuit or coil.
Resulting bright cfl, and also a plasma stream, simultaneously, that wasn't the case with one transistor.

At the expense of the transformer(Canon bubblejet 5V/200mA), that gets pretty warm, when testing that t2-schema.

After all, I really like to run this circuit on 5 volts, and will look, if I can purchase some overkill power transistors.

I already have an ancient PC psu, that can deliver 15A/5V.

One might wonder, what is it, that I'm after with all this?

It's simply that plasma thing, very new thing to me, and I'm looking the way to get the most out of it. Possibly use it in productive, and creative manner.

[NickZ]

Sorveltaja:
Thank you for sharing your circuit. Looks nice, and interesting. Also appears to light the florescent tube very bright. Brighter than my circuit is able to do on 4 to 5 volts. There is a good video on YouTube about such a coil, actually it is two of the monitor tube ferrite coils that are wound, with one coil fitting inside of the other. They slide in and out for additional tuning. Your picture reminded me of that video, if I can find it again, I'll upload it.
Thanks for keeping this thread going, it's a shame that more people aren't interested.
NickZ

[Slider2732]

I agree about lack of interest, can't understand why, except it was all very popular for quite a long time. Perhaps people just moved on to other types of experiment.

That conical coil sorveltaja is very cool. Big thumbs up from me, because I know how hard it can be to wind a conical tower !
Best method i've found, is to poke two small holes near the top of the coil form, through which the start of the winding goes. Then, run down and around and every now and again put a couple of drops of white glue on the windings to make sure they don't move. Would be good to know how you did yours

The 2SC2655 is quite good on the amperage handling I see, 2A, with 0.5A to the Base. Your pair may perhaps be further enhanced with 2 diodes to the Base.
I've got a 5V circuit here, that was showing signs of heating the transistor (note for Nick too maybe) - 2x N45HER203 (medium sized black) diodes forward biased toward the Base, both increased power output several fold and allowed the transistor to be just hand warm after an hour of running. 1 diode helped, but not much, adding another made the world of difference. 3 and the drop was too much, the transistor stopped !
Transistor in this case is a D2641, Slayer circuit without a resistor...I start it by using a piezo lighter at the side of the tower.

[NickZ]

Slider and All:
Thanks for the info on the diodes to the base, I'll give it a try, as I still can't get my Exciter to run without heating on 12v. I've been running a single 1n4148 on the base, so I'll try two of them and see what happens.
It will do ok on 4 to 6v, but it's not the voltage that's the problem, its the amps. Is there a way to filter only the amps without dropping the voltage? Actually the voltage does not really matter much on these Exciters, as mine will run even on 1/2 volt.

You almost caught up with me on the number of posts, but I'll never catch up on your number of videos... At least for now I have another camera to use for videos. It works well but has very low volume level. I'll replace the dead battery in my other camera and it will be ok again.
I do hope that more of us will go back to the Exciters, as there is more than just a little more to learn about them. I love it when all of a sudden the leds, or Cfls get very bright, almost bursting. But, heat has been the issue that had kept me from developing that degree of brightness.

[Slider2732]

It's definitely worth trying 2 diodes. Dr. Stiffler's circuits feature them, 3 in fact if you include the tuning LED and his circuit was intended for 12V

Current is I=V/R
So, a pull-up resistor ought to sort you out. 10K is a common value and would probably be a 1/2Watt type for your circuit. Lots of info in something like this: http://www.physics.unlv.edu/~bill/PH...urrent_lim.pdf
I generally throw one on the Positive input, as described some posts back, but there are proper ways of doing it !

Ah yes the posts, but my videos have slowed up recently...so go for it lol. In fact though, your bad battery problem has still allowed some interesting short videos. The low volume one is a strange problem. I'd have to think it's the mic preamp section and you might look for a blown (SMD) transistor right next to the mic. Alternatively, another microphone might fix it...maybe you can desolder the mic wires and run the wires out to an audio jack. Then, a computer mic could be tried and the volume may increase. Not much to lose if you won't be using it anyway.

[NickZ]

Thanks for the advice. I did try two diodes last night, and even three. Three was too much, but two works ok, although it does drop the output some, when using only 3.6 volts. I'll keep looking into the 12 volt level though.
Like woopy said it may be possible to make this all work on very low volts.
As there is more than meets the eye, going on.
I'm now using 4 garden light solar cells to charge a wireless phone battery that is used to run my Exciter. As it seams to like the 3.6 volts that the phone battery gives, without much heat involved. But, on 12 volts every once in a while there is a great flux of current coming from the Exciter. Any lights attached get very bright. It's been hard to put my finger on just what is going on when it slams my anolog meter's needle, but it gives me hope that I'll soon figure it out, and will have lots of power coming out, to work with. It's all very intriguing, to no end. Keeps me up to all hours at night, and from sleeping once I do get into bed. All good fun though...

[sorveltaja]

Did some testings with that conical coil, and found out so far, that it works
better with only one round L2(0,7 - 1,5mm).

Adding L2 rounds, be it in flat spiral, or cylindrical form, seem to only decrease the output(barely lit the cfl, and/or the tuning led).

To me, using only one round, as a coil, feels a bit strange, as it has so low resistance. My multimeter doesn't even notice it.

Well, if the circuit likes it, I like it too.

Current schematic:

That additional coil L3, I'm not sure how it affects the circuit. I remember reading, or watching Utube videos, where L3 was used with exciter.
Couldn't figure out, how it should have been connected to circuit, so it somehow ended in parallel with L2.

So far, I still get the best results using one round L2, especially with that coil:

One round L2, as ordered. Above picture shows it in the position, that is as close to sweet spot, as I've managed to tune it so far.

At first I taped it to lower end of the cone, but by looking at the tuning led, it lit only dimly.

@Slider: Winding the conical coil can actually be as easy as cylindrical one.
Not sure if it's doable by hand, but if you have even the modest winding setup, that consist of a slow-speed motor and an axle, that holds the spring-loaded wire reel, then you're ready to go.

To make the starting a whole lot easier, smaller- or top end of the cone need to have some kind of a 'back stop' glued in place.
I used a cd-disk, which had its metal layer removed, then the center hole enlarged to fit neatly to the top of the cone.

It doesn't have to be a disk, but any object, that can form a 'shoulder', such as a suitable sized plastic ring.

To start winding, I wrapped couple rounds by hand, then secured them with few drops of super glue.

When the actual winding starts, it's important to find most suitable angle, which the coil is fed. That way the wire somewhat auto-aligns itself with already wound wire, resulting tight coil.

[NickZ]

sorveltaja:
There are many different ways to go when connecting the three different coils to the transistor circuit. It all depends on your particular set up. I try to connect them with an alligator clip to test the different connection points at first, like on the base, or on the control of the transistor to see which one works the best and where. Then I solder them on. Normally the L3 coil is the biggest final output coil, and the L1 goes to the control of the transistor, and the L2 goes on the base. The L3 also can be connected to the base, or to the control, or where you find that it works best. I like I said, it may depend on your set up.

[sorveltaja]

Nick: Thanks for an explanation. Reason for me to use L3 in this circuit, parallel with L2, as that very same L2 have so small resistance on its own(~0 ohms).

Just to provide bit more resistance for the poor transistor(s) to grab on(just my wild guess).
-------------------------------------
But, in the meantime, I've done some testings, not with conical coil, but with cylindrical one, wound around a spray paint can's cap, using that 'crown coil':


Cfl is bright, plasma stream is there also(sorry about crappy photo).

Yeah, all the standard stuff, but in addition, transistors, that I use (2 x C2655) on my circuit (mentioned earlier), don't get hot anymore, only warm.

Can't explain it better.

[Slider2732]

Hmm, 5V again ?
Excellent to get the plasma with that small tower and small voltage

Ah, here is where I noticed something: "spring-loaded wire reel" - I generally salvage from whatever and hence don't use store bought wire very often. All is manual for winding. Thanks for the tips, definitely things to remember and try out.
I like that crown coil....good name too.