Joulethief SEC exciter and variants

[Slider2732]

I wonder what the plasma would do ?
Enjoying your work jimboot.
Enjoying everybody's work ! It was a stumble onto these methods while YouTubing that's forwarded wireless energy aircraft model flight for myself..the aims of my forays.
Jonny, Lidmotor, Gbluer and everyone elses jaw dropping video's have resulted in a very messy home work area

I started off with 2 paint roller trays and a 4kV trigger coil, now at a 2" diameter 450 turn tower with BD139 transistor. I broke the trigger coil and so read this thread for another few hours.
Just wanted to join in here, instead of lurking and to thank you guys for your continuing work


Here's my trial USB power setup..it now uses a 5V cellphone charger, as PC powering is one avenue personally for all of this.
2N2222A and one other reason for posting - a 'push pipe' as I call it. It decreases in wire gauge as it goes. Starting at the bottom are 150 turns of approx 26AWG, then 150 turns of approx 32AWG and finally 150 turns of approx 38AWG.
The analogy is of a water pipe when you squeeze the end of it, the water pressure increases.

YouTube - 2N2222 good wireless field


Also a (terrible sorry) pic of my Lidmotor 2N3906 replication, using that receiving tower, but at only 3V. Neon is shown lit at the top.
There may be mileage in push pipe thoughts !

[Slider2732]

First plasma !
I was going to build up a pop bottle coil for this and, while cleaning the bottle up thought i'd try 1 turn of speaker hookup wire (20ish gauge) as the primary on my PVC pipe based shorter tower. Fired up the BD139 based circuit at 12V and got plasma ! So, I guess I join you guys with that one now...so exciting in more ways than field effects

After a few experiments with bridge rectifiers, transformers and big caps i'm still unable to convert back down to DC useable current from a receiving tower. Any pointers ?

Here's the plasma vid and there's a pic attached (sorry about quality).
YouTube - First Plasma !

[jimboot]

Hey slider, love the lightsabre haven't worked out how to. Do the plasma yet. Is that a ball of tin foil on your tower?

[jonnydavro]

Hi Slider and Great output from such a small coil.The plasma side of these experiments is fascinating and if you get a chance,check out MrFlathunter channal (Seth on this forum)and see what he is doing with fets.Thanks for sharing and joining us here and i look forward to your future experiments.Jonny.

[Slider2732]

Thanks guys for the welcome

It's a tennis ball on the top jimboot, with the tinfoil wrapped around. The field seems to change based on the height of the single wind on the tower. The lightsaber will light easier at one spot, get better range in another and then anything will light at another, but at maybe the cost of range or plasma. So a crucial resonance sweet spot maybe a little more subjective to the kind of results wished for. It seems easier to note such things with the one turn primary.
Neons will light to around 5" tower distance if just placed in the palm of the hand, no AV plug or anything. Surprised the heck out of me that did and looked like one of Lidmotor's killer 'must try' effects lol
Plasma will reach down a thin copper wire to a few feet and neons will light for an inch or so around the wire. But any tinfoil mass and that stops, as does the field. I tried a very loose pancake type arrangement off the end of the wire last night and got nothing. Nothing either with a wire running to flat foil out on the floor.
Oh, a 1K resistor in the circuit btw...I still don't really know the relationship of resistor size to power handling though.
I have a 1N4001 diode on the base, because of FET back EMF thoughts. The BD139 seems to like it well enough though and it can stay when I move along to FETs.

I'll check out Seth's work Jonny. It was yours and Lidmotor's vids that got me hooked on these circuits, such clear and informative videos from you guys.

Couple of tips perhaps -
Gain approx 22 gauge wire by the mile load from old PC monitors. Best to only touch anything that's not been powered on for months, unless you are used to discharging the tubes, but my tennis ball tower came from just 1 degauss coil found within. Also, some monitors have good clean copper bundles around the neck of the tube. I use that for rewinding brushless motors for R/C aircraft too. The darker copper on necks is pretty useless, it's glued together too well.
The monitors also contain many different MOSFET's, transistors, coils and wiring and LED's and on and on. Great resources before they get disposed of and free on Freecycle.
Old fluoro ballasts have neons in, sometimes purple in light colour.

[Slider2732]

Bit of a fun thing happened just. I built one of the pop bottle towers and then put my usual tennis ball one on top, connected output to input.
Powered up the circuit to try it all out.
Went to switch the table lamp off and it only dimmed a bit. I tried the switch again, seemed fine....and then it dawned on me what was going on

[xee2]

Bit of a fun thing happened just. I built one of the pop bottle towers and then put my usual tennis ball one on top, connected output to input.
Powered up the circuit to try it all out.
Went to switch the table lamp off and it only dimmed a bit. I tried the switch again, seemed fine....and then it dawned on me what was going on

Were you able to light the table lamp with your exciter?

[Slider2732]

Yeah
You can see in the pic how it's dimmer than the other lamp on the right of the room. Not bad though, thinking about mains versus 12V.

Enjoying Seth's video's at the moment and wondering about how much of a wind can be derived from plasma. The rotating motor type effect is to be trialed with little aircraft propellers too. Can't see there being enough to power a 1gram or so model into flight around a pole or something, but as a static display model it might look cool.

[xee2]

Yeah

I think Seth was able to light a filament bulb (dimly) when holding it very close to his large exciter coil. But, you are doing it with a smaller coil some distance away. I think you are the only one who has been able to do this. How many watts was the bulb rating?

[Slider2732]

Oh it's not a filament it's only an Energy Saver Sorry for the confusion.
The twin tower was only put there to see what I was doing (we have no overhead lights, just the two lamps in the livingroom) and, well, because it got so tall I didn't want it to fall on the floor lol
Perhaps interestingly, it was found that bulb brightness didn't change if the circuit was running or if it was off...which points to a bulb only using what it needs to. I wonder though if we can light house Energy Savers well and send electricity back into the power grid ? I have no idea how that works, but folks get paid by the electric companies for doing so and it's a thought eh.
I say 'was', because the BD139 blew up later on when I moved to 6 winds on the Primary. No idea why, but at 6V I heard the hiss start of plasma and then the circuit LED went out and that was that.

[Slider2732]

Another post from me, I do hope i'm not taking over anywhere ! but that it's interesting stuff.

After the failure of the BD139, other NPN transistors have been trialed. All are heatsink types, larger physically and power wise than the common little buddies we have used, like the MPSA06 and 2N2222A.
I'd like to construct an easy reference PDF or something for what works with pop bottle exciters and what doesn't.
Here's what I have so far:
The reference is the BD139 - datasheet here: http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/data...cs/mXvrwxu.pdf
Transistors have been Epitaxial, power, MOSFET's..any and every NPN around here. Sources are second hand stuff like PC monitors and radios, so your mileage may vary.
Voltage is 12V, wall adapter rated to 800mA. All working transistors will give wireless effects at 3V. Variable resistor has been important to make some fire, rated at 1Mohm.

Best to worst, but all working:
2SC2625
BD139
TIP31C
C3421
C4793
D1609
TIP122
BD677

Non working
BDX54B
2SK2648
IRF630
IRF740
IRFZ46N
K2161


In use right now and the best so far, is the 2SC2625 (believed to have come from a PC monitor). Datasheet - http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/data...ec/2SC2625.pdf

[jimboot]

Thanks slider,
I'll start to try a few that you haven't listed there,
Also I should have said that electrolysis is happening off 4 d cells a 3cm coil 100mA

[jimboot]

Also i have done away with the resistor completely and replaced the led with a 4148 diode

[Slider2732]

I'm new to electrolysis, but like what i'm seeing.
One usage idea may be to collect the gases in a chamber fitted to a Matchbox car, have a little air-bed type one way valve on the end, when the gases get to a certain point the valve collapses releasing the gases into the path of plasma coming off the end of the Secondary and zoooom, off goes the car !
But perhaps i'm barking up the wrong tree on general thoughts.

Yeah, if we could gather a good list of transistors that work and what their real world results are, I think it would be a good resource.
The 2SC2326 is turning into a star performer, at least as far as comparisons for where I am at this point. Plasma starts on it's own and i'm getting dots on my fingertips like some of you other guys lol. Can light a cigarette off that stuff !
Best experiment though, so far, is the plasma lamp, made using a 12V automotive bulb, Apologies for the messy setup and the non cleaned up former PC heatsink, but here it is

YouTube - Homemade plasma globe

[jimboot]

Very cool slider. I have yet to produce plasma off my tiny coil. Looks like ill have to pull apart some CRT monitors