Eric Dollard

[Aaron]

Eric Dollard - Cosmic Induction Generator

Thanks for sharing that dR-Green!

I was at Eric's lab a couple weeks ago visiting with him and John Polakowski.

Here is a pic I took of Eric looking of John's shoulder as John works on a transmitter for the Cosmic Induction Generator.

https://plus.google.com/118409944702...ts/ZAzpQMB3VgF

@All, that is Eric's new Official Google + website. If you could all support Eric by joining his network and liking his posts - that would help spread the word.

Also, on Eric's Official homepage, there is a Google + Like button at the top, please support Eric by visiting his homepage and clicking that button - Eric Dollard

You can see that the lab is intact and Eric is busy working on these kind of projects as he had intended.

Anyway, I'll be posting more pictures and videos of my visit in the near future.

[jpolakow]

Cosmic Induction Generator

Hey all,
Here's an update as to what I've been up to with the Cosmic Induction Generator (CIG)recreation. Its time for an update as to what I've been building.

As Aaron noted in his latest newsletter, I was at the lab recently with him and Eric. I had finished the coil forms, and brought the coil forms to the lab. I finished winding the coils and building the stands for the coils, and then we were going to do a test run of the coils and potentially make some sparks. Unfortunately fate didn't turn out that way, but progress was still made.

First, an overview of the CIG:
The CIG basically consists of an AM amplifier/transmitter which powers some Tesla coils. The transmitter consists of vacuum tubes providing the power amplification. Solid state components are used very minimally. The Tesla coils are in a unique configuration, two Tesla Transformers aimed at each other creating an extremely intense dielectric field in the middle of the two units. Also where a normal Tesla coil would be grounded to the earth in order to transmit, these coils will be referenced only to each other.

Between the two coils is where the magic happens. For the CIG, the objective is to put a bulb containing a gas conducive to plasma creation - in the middle of the intense dielectric field and see the "galaxy in a bulb". It is reported by Eric that inside the bulb the plasma takes on a life of its own, and the electricity has a memory, and displays intelligence. The primary objective of this project is to recreate that display.

The nice thing about the CIG though is that it is multipurpose. It can also be used to create "singing" arc discharges when modulated with an audio source. Also, all the coils(primaries, secondaries, extras) are being built on independent frames and stands, so they can be used in a different configuration than just pointing at each other. If spread apart and grounded they can be used to transmit and receive to each other.

CIG Components
The Induction Generator can be simplified to 3 distinct components: power supplies, the transmitter section, and the tesla coils.

Power Supplies
The power supplies are pretty basic DC linear supplies.

AM transmitter
The transmitter will be Class C operation. This particular design consists of 829B driver tubes and 4-250 power tubes. The tubes will be in push-pull operation, driven at their maximum permissible values. The operating frequency is chosen to be 1.8 Mc, or 160 meters. The 829B tubes will be driven by a WW2 era VFO/Exciter/Transmitter called a TCS. The TCS puts out approximately 25 watts at an output impedance of around 10,000 Ohms. It will be coupled to the 829B's through a link coupling.

Tesla Coils
The Tesla Coils were designed for an operating frequency of about 1.8 Mc. Coil forms were made cut out of wood, the wood was dried, varnished with high temp epoxy, and then fiberglass tubes were used to connect the base plates.

Pictures and more info will be in following posts.

[jpolakow]

Some of the power supplies that have been built:

[jpolakow]

Coil Forms

The Coil Forms were designed, and the wood bases built first. They were cut out of sheets of plywood with a router. Then baked to remove all moisture, and finally sealed with multiple coats of epoxy to increase the dielectric strength and also to equalize the dielectric gradient within the wood. Fiberglass tubes were notched where the conductors would lay.

Everything took a lot longer than it looks in the pictures. It took probably a couple months to design and build the coils.








Primary bases finished:


Secondary bases finished:


A finished primary coil form:

[jpolakow]

The transmitter itself for the CIG is being built on the chassis of an old 600 volt military power supply:





You can see my supervisor in the background here:




The power supply was in amazing shape, looking like it had never been used. All the tubes were brand new. I probably would have actually used the power supply because it was in such beautiful condition, but its current output wasn't enough for my purposes. I started dissasembling the PS to repurpose it as a chassis for the transmitter:






When the transmitter is complete you should be able to see the 4-250's glowing through the metal screens here:

[jpolakow]

These are the tubes being used for the transmitter.
The 829B's:


The 4-250's:


Notice the radiation symbol on the right of the tube, I think this is due to the thoriated tungsten cathodes:


Here's a 5C22 hydrogen thyratron I acquired for a radar pulse modulator I will be building in a later project:

[jpolakow]

Recent trip to lab

The plan was to do a test run of the coils. Unfortunately the CIG gods had other plans for us. The coils were to be driven by a TCS WW2 era military transmitter.

Eric had previously acquired two of these transmitters, and both were supposedly operational. Neither transmitter turned out to be functioning when we attempted to fire them up. The transmitters receive their HV supply from a motor/generator unit called a dynamotor, which in turn is run off a 12 volt battery. Unfortunately the dynamotor was mis-wired, so it wasn’t providing filament voltage or plate voltage to the transmitter. After going through the dynamotor wiring checked against the schematics we were able to correct the mistakes. (Tracking down wiring problems in big bundles of wire can be very tedious)

A second attempt was made to fire up the transmitter and this time smoke started coming out of the power supply cable where it connected to the transmitter. It is a multi-pin connector, and some of the wires were connected to the wrong pins. So all new cables were made with new wire, a very time consuming task. There were around 15 pins on each end of the cable, and 2 cables to be made. So around 60 solder connections to be done, and they were difficult to solder! After that to avoid further problems we went through the transmitters to check for problems. More issues were encountered.

A ham had previously been inside the transmitter and attempted some ill advised modifications. After much checking against the schematics again we were able to isolate the modifications and reverse them to correct specs. Also we discovered some broken parts. One of the adjustable loading coils (tuning inductance) was broken; its ceramic core had shattered at some point.

After I had spent 5 days there, I had to return home to go to work. I spoke with Eric on the phone the following day and he was able to get the transmitter going, and tune the coils to resonance. The resonant frequency of the coils turned out to be 2.4 Mc, slightly above the designed value of 1.8 Mc. I’m not sure what caused the discrepancy yet, but I will investigate on the next visit.

It was a good exercise in troubleshooting though. Eric is absolutely brilliant in this area. He seems to have an uncanny intuition on where exactly to look when something is wrong. That kind of skill can only be gained through decades of experience, I was glad to have him there!

I should be going back in about a month to make another attempt at test firing the coils.

Here are some pictures of the coils mostly completed: (still need a gradient ring on the secondaries)

The coil stands for the primaries and secondaries were designed so they would exactly slip inside each other. You can see that in the pictures.

[jpolakow]

Now for the transmitter construction I have been working on. Previously I had stripped the power supply chassis bare to repurpose it as a transmitter. The first thing to do was to get the big components in, the 4-250’s first.

A copper ground plane was test fitted, and then installed:




Marking the cutouts to be made:


Ground plane attached, marking the cutouts for the tube sockets:


Cutouts made:

[jpolakow]

I decided it would be good to insulate the ground plane from the socket terminals because they would be in close proximity.The max voltage these terminals will see is around 800 V (for the screen voltage), and -500 V (for the grids). The 5 KV plate voltage goes on the top of the tube.



So I masked off the copper and poured some epoxy on both sides of the ground plane:






The epoxy was then filed down until it was just an edge over the copper:




Sockets fit perfectly:

[jpolakow]

More of transmitter build

Tubes installed:


The 4-250's are visible through the screen:


The black boxes are the output coupling capacitors, to keep the 5 KVDC plate voltage off the Tesla coils. They are rated at 16.5 KV and weren’t cheap!


Mounting the fan connector:




Two meters on the front panel installed:

[jpolakow]

As to where it stands right now, I am working on completing the transmitter/modulator (which drives the Tesla Coils). It will probably take a month or two before I am able to finish it. I am taking my time, and making sure everything is being done methodically and correctly. There's no room for short circuits when working with 5 KV! After the transmitter is completed, then there are a few power supplies I have to complete that put out the various electrode voltages for the vacuum tubes. And also I need to make a meter panel that displays all the important voltages and currents going on in the transformer. Overall I expect to be done with the first phase of this project within about 6 months. Then there are more "cool" things that can be done afterwards.
I probably won't really be answering many questions regarding the build, I am focusing my time on actually designing and building the equipment. However I will give periodic updates to my progress. Sometime within the next month or so I plan to go back to the lab where we will do a test run of the coils, and I will try to take more pictures at that time. Progress is slow but steady.

Also for those that have seen Techzombie's recent video, I had nothing to do with it and regret that it was made. I feel I was misrepresented in the video. About a year ago I decided I wanted to do a recreation of Eric's CIG. I started gathering parts and building some of the lower voltage power supplies. I started making significant progress about 6 months ago, and the pieces started to fall into place. The coil calculations were done, the coil forms were engineered and built, and the HV power supplies started to come together. In the video it seemed to be claimed that I was "struggling" to finish the CIG, and that I am being used by this person or that person. To be clear, the only person I have really been making this piece of equipment for is myself and Eric. There is no hidden agenda or anything like that. It displays what part of us at EPD Labs have been working on. Yes it is a struggle sometimes (HV parts and vintage radio parts are expensive!), and sometimes there are design roadblocks, but that is to be expected in any project. I will continue this project to completion, even if it ends up taking longer than I thought. I have learned a significant amount in this undertaking, and it has been enjoyable. For anyone that wants to truly learn the principles that Eric is presenting, the only way to do that is to put it into actual practice.



(more pictures and updates to come shortly)

[dR-Green]

Excellent work John.

The resonant frequency of the coils turned out to be 2.4 Mc, slightly above the designed value of 1.8 Mc. I’m not sure what caused the discrepancy yet, but I will investigate on the next visit.

Was that without any gradient rings or anything? Eric's coil design had a shorter secondary wire length than standard which would make the coil's "free" frequency somewhat higher than the design frequency, because the condenser is supposed to tune it back down. Assuming you also used the 20 turn secondary calculations, my first secondary with one gradient ring had a resonant frequency about 1.12 times F (yours is 1.3). I'm not sure if I ever measured it without the gradient ring so I don't know how much higher the frequency would be without it, but it's something to keep in mind if the test setup was as pictured. Also the wire looks wound pretty tight, out of interest I looked it up earlier and found that the wire will be approx 97% the calculated length if it becomes an octagon.

I also have progress to report. The 17 turns Colorado Springs secondary configuration is being replicated as closely as possible, so in order to translate calculated wire spacings into the real world as acurately as possible by hand I arranged a series of lines on illustration/DTP software to represent the location of each turn and printed it out at 100% scale. This gives a paper template to work from, which is then stuck on to the PVC conduit and sliced with a knife. This then gives an edge to work against with a small file(s) to make the grooves.

The CS primary and secondary are closely coupled and so this scales down to VERY close coupling, calculated at just over 1mm space between the conductors, which may or may not be a problem. Also because the primary and secondary copper masses are matched it requires a relatively thick primary conductor, which makes replicating the original primary groove spacing physically impossible because one turn would be inside the other, however the original spacing between each turn of the primary conductor itself has been reproduced. So being an experimental coil provisions are made with grooves for 15 primary turns with constant spacing in order to adjust the coupling, and some extra length of PVC conduit is left at the top of the frame to allow use of a condenser ring if need be.









The end result will look something like this, but I haven't decided where the inner ring will end up yet.

[jpolakow]

Was that without any gradient rings or anything? Eric's coil design had a shorter secondary wire length than standard which would make the coil's "free" frequency somewhat higher than the design frequency, because the condenser is supposed to tune it back down. Assuming you also used the 20 turn secondary calculations, my first secondary with one gradient ring had a resonant frequency about 1.12 times F (yours is 1.3). I'm not sure if I ever measured it without the gradient ring so I don't know how much higher the frequency would be without it, but it's something to keep in mind if the test setup was as pictured. Also the wire looks wound pretty tight, out of interest I looked it up earlier and found that the wire will be approx 97% the calculated length if it becomes an octagon.

Yes the 2.4 Mc was without any gradient rings, just free resonance. I figure when I add the capacitance it will bring it down somewhat, but I'm not sure to where yet. I'm going back to the lab in a little less than a month and will let you know the results.

I had considered that the 'octagon' shape would make the wire length shorter, but I never bothered to figure out by how much. I'm glad I know now! I didn't realize Eric's equations were designed to make the frequency a little bit higher so the capacitance could bring it back down. Thanks for letting me know! I'll let you know anything else I find. I'm going to the lab in a little less than a month to fire up the coils with the now working TCS.

[jpolakow]

Few more pictures

Got the RF output connectors mounted:




Fabricated some brackets to mount the output coupling capacitors:

[jpolakow]

Started laying out where the connectors go on the front panel, circled the holes that were unnecessary to be welded up:








Ground down to bare metal where the holes need to be welded:


Had the holes welded. There were still some imperfections in the panel left from the welding, and the panel wardped slightly from the heat, so I had to do some filler work. I used JB Weld. I prefer JB Weld over body filler for a couple reasons: its waterproof, its more durable, and its self leveling. (it requires a longer cure time though)

The panel with filler on it:


The panel sanded: