Donald L. Smith

[dragon]

The 3 plate capacitor can make your drawing above a bit more simplified. It is basically a capacitor with 2 different capacitances used in a circuit for 2 purposes. One to control the pumping of energy, the other to store the pumped energy without affecting the input.

The 3 plate cap isn't anything new - I learned of the concept from Dr. Stiffler in his early works then followed along with ibpointless and lasersabre's use of the same device.

The diagram below shows one way of using it as a full wave rectifier. The second shows it used as an unconventional tank type circuit. It's basically as you drew it in the above diagram as a full wave rectifier charging a main cap only more integrated into the circuit.

The small plate - outer plate has a small capacitance based on the area and can be adjusted by changing the diameter. The inner plates form the main storage.

Now, you can take the small capacitance and run it with a coil using a high frequency. The storage cap can now be used with another tank circuit for yet a much lower frequency... something closer to our normal 50/60 hz that we use normally as shown in the 3rd diagram.

Should I continue or is this just boring everyone....

[Farmhand]

I see, thanks Dragon, not quite the same thing then, the thing I drew should
make AC from a DC cap. At least that's the idea. If we can do a similar thing
in solid state I think it could work. Thanks for posting the drawings.

I tested out the small Neon power supply and it seems to work well with a
spark gap. Time will tell, I got good spark with 3 nF and a 1,5 mm spark gap.

Here's a short video the bulb and the inverter are using the 2.7 to 2.8 amps
the little power supply uses the rest. I didn't even turn it halfway up. At
minimum it uses about 6 watts. I just turned it up a bit and it used just over 1 amp.
Maybe it'll burn up, it is fairly efficient though at first glance. When I get it
safely wired 'll test it better.

Neon Power Supply test.wmv - YouTube

[dragon]

One of the things that I questioned was the polarity of the coil end of the secondary. Neg or positive energy. I'm not sure why this bothered me so much but I felt it was important in the sense of what and how the output could be best used. Watch this video and determine the directionality of the coil. I'm bringing the earth connected wire close to the output of the tesla coil.

windfilter's Channel - YouTube

I figured if it was dominantly negative then we could "suck" charge a cap quicker than we could force or push it into a cap with amperage. As well, if the coil is charged to a HV negative then the earth could become the source.

Here I show that the cap can be charged from an earth ground or antenna to high voltage using a simple kacher and the 3 plate cap posted last year.

windfilter's Channel - YouTube

We want to draw energy from the environment, Dave45 and Farmhand called our device "bait". If you look at how the natural environment exchanges energy to maintain a balance then our device needs to create a slight imbalance to become the bait. So polarity of the coil becomes important, I would think.

Basic electrostatic induction comes to mind.... electrostatic induction - YouTube

[bboj]

Is it possible to be more specific and keep things more simple?
If we are dealing with incoming radiation of certain f. Than when we construct a resonant sistem resonating at the same f, than the incoming radiation is adding to the resonant sistem - the energy is accumulating. At a resonance the sistem is oscilating at a certain f with minimal losses. Everything that is hammering the system at the exactly the same f is adding to the oscilation.

[Farmhand]

One of the things that I questioned was the polarity of the coil end of the secondary. Neg or positive energy. I'm not sure why this bothered me so much but I felt it was important in the sense of what and how the output could be best used. Watch this video and determine the directionality of the coil. I'm bringing the earth connected wire close to the output of the tesla coil.

windfilter's Channel - YouTube

I figured if it was dominantly negative then we could "suck" charge a cap quicker than we could force or push it into a cap with amperage. As well, if the coil is charged to a HV negative then the earth could become the source.

Here I show that the cap can be charged from an earth ground or antenna to high voltage using a simple kacher and the 3 plate cap posted last year.

windfilter's Channel - YouTube

We want to draw energy from the environment, Dave45 and Farmhand called our device "bait". If you look at how the natural environment exchanges energy to maintain a balance then our device needs to create a slight imbalance to become the bait. So polarity of the coil becomes important, I would think.

Basic electrostatic induction comes to mind.... electrostatic induction - YouTube

Yes you're right Dragon, I think. Tesla coils can have the curious trait of when
a grounded object is approached to the air terminal it appears as though the
ground is discharging to the top of the coil ( I guess it is ) and if enough
power is used or the terminal has a sharp point, the terminal appears to
discharge into the air.

In a normal electrical system the system ground is the negative ( this is the
reference point ) and the voltage is measured above and below the reference
point. However in some Tesla systems (and there would be others also), the
system ground is the positive. So everything is not so much upside down as
we might first think, but shifted in level. It's difficult to visualize sometimes
and hard to explain, and very easy to get mixed up, especially when dealing with both
ways at the same time.

The electrostatic induction video is priceless. The negative is the source and
the positive is the drain, Curiously that is how a mosfet's pins are labeled. The
source pin goes towards negative which is usually system ground and the
drain pin goes towards positive.

Cheers

[dragon]

To add a bit more to the oddities, I took a low battery - connected an antenna to the positive lead with a diode in series then the output of one of my coils connected to the neg terminal. The battery was charged during the time of operation.

Here is a simple circuit that I've recently been playing with to test the theory and to play around with various combinations... Actually this was introduced to us by lasersaber in a different form originally and it is a modified version of the fugi flash circuit so i can't take any credit for it.

This will supercharge a cap in a tiny fraction of a second if built as shown. This one charges a 160uf cap to 300 volts faster than you can touch and release the positive input to the circuit. I have many variations of this circuit that I'm currently working on. It also follows along the path of the "importance of earth ground" video I put up a while ago although a different circuit is being used. The one in the video runs at 1.095 Mhz

windfilter's Channel - YouTube

[sebosfato]

Don smith still a mystery to me. But the only way to find it is searching for it.

He is definitely taping into space time resonance.

Good luck, I will try thinking over to help somehow.

Br
sebosfato

[Farmhand]

I've decided to break from convention again, I was thinking about how to build
the coils and I decided to build them as shown in the sketch below. The
drawing just shows them as two Tesla type coils base to base with end capacitances.
I intend to make it so the primary can slide 30 mm or so either way with the
secondaries about 60 mm apart.

EDIT: (the drawing says 2 turns 5 mm copper tubing but it should say 6 mm tubing. )


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I've drawn the ground on the center tap but only for the sake of the drawing
being just coils. The connections of the secondary I'll make the way Don
shows in his drawings, which I will probably do without any end rings.

I decided to go with the concept of matching the weight of the primary and
each secondary rather than wire lengths. Anyway that's what I'm going to do,
it should work at at least 4.5 to 5 Mhz and produce 8 Kv or so to charge the caps.
The voltage is based on about 1000 volts input and going by the online
calculator but I expect in reality it will be a bit different.
If it works someone else can have the credit, if it doesn't work then i'll
take the blame.

I used these to help.

Wire weights here
Copper Wire Properties Guage Size AWG - RF Cafe

LC calculator
L/C Resonance Calculator

This can help, but it only works for close wound coils, it can help.
OLTC Calculator

...


Hi sebosfato, How's things ? Thanks for the thoughts. Good to hear from you.

[dragon]

Your windings are quite close to what I put together - 2 39 turn secondaries and a 3 turn primary although the diameter is quite different. My weights aren't perfectly matched but it tunes nicely.

The output is way to high to manage comfortably so when I get back to it I plan to unwind 1/2 the secondary turns to get it back into the 10kv range or lower hopefully.

Here's another site I find quite handy for quick calculating coils and lots of other stuff...

DeepFriedNeon - Tesla Coils

Looking forward to your testing...

[Farmhand]

Hi Dragon, I'm trying to walk on a fence made from razor blades I wan't to
be able to test some things somewhat authentically Don's way, but also build
the setup in a way that allows me to also try other things, like extra coils and
such.

I thought about 80 turns but that would be to high a voltage, I also
considered 20 turns which would make good sense but I would have to use
two strands of 1mm as one for each winding and the frequency would be too
high for my liking.

So I made compromises to keep the input small and the frequency high for
this, but within reach of 1 Mhz operation if I use a cap on the secondary and
increase the primary capacitance, which should mean I should be able to
match the frequency of my big coil for other tests and fun stuff.

I would go for a very high frequency but my function generator only works up
to 3 Mhz. Not that I should need it for this Don stuff but if I use secondary
caps to lower the frequency it will be useful then.

Cheers

[bboj]

Isn't the lenght of secondary dependent on f? Thati is if you want to operate l2 at resonance.

[Farmhand]

Isn't the lenght of secondary dependent on f? Thati is if you want to operate l2 at resonance.

Yeah it can be. But it's more like the other way around with some other
factors involved too. If you decide the frequency beforehand then yes, you
will need to calculate the wire length and determine how you will wind the coil
to get that frequency as the resonant frequency of the coil. Caps can be
added to adjust it.

This is how I worked it out, I knew I wanted about 4 or 5 Mhz for the
resonant frequency of the secondary coil ( I'm working it out going by one
side only for the calculations ). Looking Here I see that 5 Mhz corresponds
to a 1/4 wavelength of 15 meters (wire length in coil) however in reality I
know that when i wind that into a coil it'll be less. So I look Here and input
some data and I see that 20 turns of 1mm wire close wound on a 90 mm
former is 10.744 meters, has 4.8 pF self capacitance and 143 uH inductance.
If I then fill in the data for the primary using 150 mm feed diameter then put 6 pF
in the toroid capacitance I see that the frequency is around 4 Mhz for a coil
like that, my experimental experience tells me if I wind the coil with spaced
turns it will increase the resonant frequency a bit. So for a 11 meter piece of
wire wound into a coil the way I'll do it, I estimate it will be between 4.3and 5.3 Mhz
I don't mind exactly what it ends up.

I go here to check, I put in 8 pF to account for residual self capacitance
and for some capacitance added (like the load), and input 143 uH it tells me
4.7 Mhz, so all is good.

For the primary I knew I wanted to use 6 mm tubing so I matched the weight
with 2 turns, which worked out good. I was thinking four turns at first but two
is ok. This calculator also tells me the approximate primary capacitance to use
to be in the ballpark. And from that the input power can be estimated for a
given spark gap or (primary excitation frequency).

So yes the resonant frequency is dependent on the wire length as well as
how its wound and what it is connected to. Hope that all helps a bit.

This is how far I got today with the mounting I'm not sure which will be the
front and which the back yet.



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Cheers

Edit: Ok fixed the first link.

[Farmhand]

I found some clear polyurethane (satin finish) for the wood so I won't need to
paint it flat black, , I'll also use that to seal the PVC tube inside
and out after heating it up for a while to dry it out, I'll also have to heat up the
wood and dry it out too, we've just had a big storm looks like it'll rain all night,
some serious strokes of lightening real close too. Also where I will wind the 1 mm
wire coils on the former I'll rub some bee's wax on there just before I wind them,
I'm not sure what I'll use to space the wire neatly yet, maybe fishing line,
whatever I use I'll probably take it out after it's finished.

The storms caused me connection problems so I had difficulty editing the last post.

I tested the small neon power supply with more load last night and it kept
tripping the SGFI, but I had such a mess of wire's I can't be sure if it was
stray arcs or exactly what it was all the time, it does seem ok up to about
1 amp input as long as there are no stray arcs from secondary to primary or
vice versa. If worst come to worst I have a large TV on the way (a really big one)
so I can get the flyback from it and power it with a regular type mosfet
switch or from 240v AC or something I've got a small 300 watt sine wave
inverter I can use if I need to. I've got a few ways I could power it but I
would like to see if I can make this cheap and efficient little power supply
work.

There is two wire's coming out of the center of the HV resin block these go to
the circuit and the SGFI must work from these wires. I'm guessing they would
be the center tap. or some kind of sensing wire. Also it trips immediately with
my Leyden jars but only at higher power with a rolled polystyrene cap. Maybe
some inductors between the Neon power supply and the primary cap will help.

Hmm anyway I'll have to see how it goes, it seems to make a good spark
across 1.5 mm gap with 3 nF cap and only using 5 watts input. Shame about
the SGFI in these things.

Cheers all.

P.S. Looking at the site that Dragon linked earlier they have this page about
the secondary former, Tesla Coils - Secondary Coil .
I think it's important to get things as dry as possible especially things that
can hold moisture (like wood) and PVC to a degree.

..

[Farmhand]

Finally got a rain free day so I applied some varnish, I decided to go with an
exterior varnish to seal the wood rather than the polyurethane I was planning
to use. The front section will hold the primary circuit and over the back is
where all the connections for the secondary will be, the output section will
connect back there.



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I also managed to get a 6 foot ground stake all the way in the ground. I had
to drill a 4 foot hole in the ground with the tractor auger then drive the last
two feet in with a hammer then I filled the hole in.

I was looking at the picture's of Don's setup in the other thread and I noticed
that a lot of the items on the drawing are not on the device.

ie, Item #8 the voltage control shunt is not on the device in the picture. And
neither is item # 13 the Earth ground, no sign of it whatsoever that I can see.

[dragon]

Beautiful work farmhand ! There are a lot of discrepancies within Don's published work. I wouldn't take any of them as "fact" and proceed with your own testing and follow your "gut feelings" on the outcomes of the tests. I'm sure you will - I'm hoping to see some similarities in what your doing to my tests in the past but more so that your unique view of it will help me see things I've overlooked.