Bedini Ferris Wheel Regauging Motor

[txaggie00]

Batteries

@All,

Spring Break is really messing up us getting the rest of our rods this week, but we are probably going to put the slave coil that we have finished on tomorrow. We may post a video Wed or Thurs if we notice any significant charging on the cap.

Anyway, on to my actual question. Brent and I are going to start looking into getting some good batteries. We want to get some that have practical use. Ideally, we would like to get some golf cart batteries like RS suggested, because they have fairly high amp-hours. Once we are done with the build and fine tuning, we would like to run some charge-discharge tests on the batteries to really get some good data points for this machine. We'd like to parallel the charging batteries and run them through an inverter to power some real world loads and we'd like to have batteries that are applicable to that type of scenario. Do you guys have any suggestions on where we could find some good somewhat inexpensive batteries? We got some prices for some trojan batteries:

T-145: 6V Deep Cycle Battery - $146
T-1275 12V Deep Cycle Battery - $206

To me that seems fairly expensive. Do you guys think it would be alright to run regular 12V car batteries as the primary and these higher amp-hour batteries as the charging batteries with this machine? That would save us quite a bit of cash.

Let us know your thoughts on this!

Thanks,
Scott

[Les_K]

Thanks Les!

I have been analyzing his drawing, other posts and the video and I hate to say it, but I am still confused. Jerdee also has a drawing on post 198. In JB's DVD of the behind the scenes before the conference, he explicitly says that the left coil is closer to the main coil than the right coil. All the posts suggest the opposite. I have attached a picture of a still shot from a video clip that was posted on YouTube from the DVD. The perspective is not straight on, but to me, it appears that when the left coil is TDC, the main coil is is left of TDC and the right coil is right of TDC (although 2-dimensionally it looks like the right coil is left of TDC), which would coincide with what JB tells the lady about the left coil being closer to the main coil than the right coil. I realize it's not that big of a deal and our "sweet spot" probably won't be the same anyway, but it would be really nice to be able to match JB's setup (and performance)!

Thanks,
Scott

EDIT: Forum resized the picture. Here is the link to the full size image: Coil Lineup

Jerdee was corrected by John B. until he got the drawing right. Check the posts associated with #68. I have both videos I'll watch again tomarrow.

As to batteries I was looking at the Trojan 24TMX myself. It is a little smaller and cheaper, 85AH at 12 volts so was thinking it might be a good choice.


Les

[minoly]

I don't recall much conversation about whether or not Impedance plays a role in this setup. if it does, the 6 volts should win as they are as close to .001 as your going to get. car batteries will be the highest. Since there is a cap dump, impedance should not be too much of an issue for the back end, and perhaps we can get away w/ using a paralleled cap on the front end as well, however, our best chargers on the SG have low impedance primaries w/ or w/o the cap.
just my 2 cents.

Patrick

[Web000x]

Thanks Les!

I have been analyzing his drawing, other posts and the video and I hate to say it, but I am still confused. Jerdee also has a drawing on post 198. In JB's DVD of the behind the scenes before the conference, he explicitly says that the left coil is closer to the main coil than the right coil. All the posts suggest the opposite. I have attached a picture of a still shot from a video clip that was posted on YouTube from the DVD. The perspective is not straight on, but to me, it appears that when the left coil is TDC, the main coil is is left of TDC and the right coil is right of TDC (although 2-dimensionally it looks like the right coil is left of TDC), which would coincide with what JB tells the lady about the left coil being closer to the main coil than the right coil. I realize it's not that big of a deal and our "sweet spot" probably won't be the same anyway, but it would be really nice to be able to match JB's setup (and performance)!

Thanks,
Scott

EDIT: Forum resized the picture. Here is the link to the full size image: Coil Lineup

Thank you,

I had been looking for this shot of the wheel for some time now. Thank you for the direction.

With the correct impedance coil such as your own, how big is the spike off of it?

How many times does your coil need to be pulsed to get twice the battery voltage (2x36v) in your 17000 MFD cap?

May be in a previous post, but what is your inductance of that coil?

Good luck with your build. You got this.

Dave

[citfta]

Try a recycling center

For those of you on a limited budget you might try a recycling center for some used batteries. I was looking for some small garden tractor type batteries for my Tesla Switch and found I could buy them from a local recycle place for 32 cents a pound. They didn't care if the batteries tested good or bad it was the same price. Since my SSG does a good job of desulfating and restoring most batteries I bought a couple of extras in case I got one with a shorted cell. I bought 6 used batteries for the price of one new one. Take a good tester with you and see what you can find.

Carroll

[txaggie00]

@Dave

With the correct impedance coil such as your own, how big is the spike off of it?

With just the main coil and the scope between the two collectors, we couldn't see the spike. Not sure if it was a scope issue or wheel issue, but I will definitely let everyone know as we progress.

How many times does your coil need to be pulsed to get twice the battery voltage (2x36v) in your 17000 MFD cap?

When we were using the 36V zener, it was taking about 5.5 revolutions to charge up to 77V, so I guess it was taking ~88 pulses to get to that charge. I expect it will be a whole different animal when we get the two slave coils on there. Again, we will keep everyone posted.

May be in a previous post, but what is your inductance of that coil?

We don't have an LCR meter and we totally forgot to take some measurements when RS came to visit and brought his, but when he comes back, we will make certain we take good measurements on all our coils.


@Les: Let me know what you think after you take a look at the video. I'll probably have to watch that part again too, just to make sure I haven't been misunderstanding what he is saying.

@Patrick: So you don't think it would be an issue of using car batteries as the primaries and whatever else as the charging, correct? I agree with you about the backend being dumped by a cap so it wouldn't matter for the charging batteries. It's interesting you brought up the impedance of the primary batteries as a factor. I know there has been discussion about that in the monopole group, but Luther had brought that to our attention a while back. We may have to ask JB if this matters with this machine.

@Carroll: Thank you, as obvious as that might have been to others, I would have not thought of a battery recycle center. I remember JB saying the batteries have to be real good with no sulfation for this machine, so we'd have to pick out some really good ones. I guess if we had the Renaissance Charge RC-20A12, we could pick up some bad ones and rejuvenate them. I don't think our little RC-1AU-120 would work on those big batteries.

Anyway, thank you everyone for your help and input!

Thanks,
Scott

[Web000x]

With just the main coil and the scope between the two collectors, we couldn't see the spike. Not sure if it was a scope issue or wheel issue, but I will definitely let everyone know as we progress.

Are you looking for the spike while you have your capacitor and batteries hooked up to the circuit?

When the capacitor or battery is hooked up to the circuit, you will not see the spike. Only when the cap is full or disconnected will the spike manifest on the scope.

I would say unhook your capacitor and charging batteries, but I don't know if that would be a good idea. The spike that is coming off of a coil as large as yours could possibly fry you transistors in a hurry so be careful.

Dave

[txaggie00]

Hey Dave,

Yes, we had the cap and batteries hooked up. I didn't realize the cap would absorb the spike quick enough to not show up in the scope. Maybe I should go back to test leads between the bridge and cap . You're probably right about disconnecting the cap and batteries being a bad idea. I'd hate to have to buy another batch of 20 transistors just to match Beta's again!

I'm wondering if we just bypass the bridge and cap and go straight to the batteries, if we'd be able to see the spike . We have some 12V conditioned batteries we could do that on. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Thanks,
Scott

Are you looking for the spike while you have your capacitor and batteries hooked up to the circuit?

When the capacitor or battery is hooked up to the circuit, you will not see the spike. Only when the cap is full or disconnected will the spike manifest on the scope.

I would say unhook your capacitor and charging batteries, but I don't know if that would be a good idea. The spike that is coming off of a coil as large as yours could possibly fry you transistors in a hurry so be careful.

Dave

[Web000x]

Hey Dave,

Yes, we had the cap and batteries hooked up. I didn't realize the cap would absorb the spike quick enough to not show up in the scope. Maybe I should go back to test leads between the bridge and cap . You're probably right about disconnecting the cap and batteries being a bad idea. I'd hate to have to buy another batch of 20 transistors just to match Beta's again!

I'm wondering if we just bypass the bridge and cap and go straight to the batteries, if we'd be able to see the spike . We have some 12V conditioned batteries we could do that on. Anyone have any thoughts on that?

Thanks,
Scott

I don't think that you will be able to see the true potential of the spike unless there is nothing there to absorb the energy. A battery is similar to a large capacitor so there would not be a spike on the scope shot.

It is probably better to just 'know' that the spike is happening. At 36V pulsing a high inductance coil, that spike is gonna be huge. The MJL21193&4 datasheet has a maximum collector to emitter rating of 400V. My small machine that is running on 12V has been kicking back at about 700V. Those transistors can take some abuse, but I am right on the edge of killing them I'm sure. If you get curious, make sure that you have more transistors on hand.

Dave

[txaggie00]

Those transistors can take some abuse, but I am right on the edge of killing them I'm sure. If you get curious, make sure that you have more transistors on hand.

Dave,

We have quite a few on hand with unmatched Beta's, so we may give it a shot when we have the other slave on there. We are currently in the process of hooking the first slave up. We will probably post a video in the next hour or so.

Thanks,
Scott

[Web000x]

Scott,

Did you guys have a large transistor beta gap between the PNP and NPN transistors?

The datasheet says 25 to 75. All of my PNP's were 68 - 75 and my NPN's were all 20 - 28. I just matched all of my PNP's with other similar PNP's and my NPN's with other similar NPN's. I'm not sure if John Bedini wants the PNP's to be close to the NPN's as well.

How did all of yours measure out?

Dave

[John_K]

Don't do it!

Dave,

We have quite a few on hand with unmatched Beta's, so we may give it a shot when we have the other slave on there. We are currently in the process of hooking the first slave up. We will probably post a video in the next hour or so.

Thanks,
Scott

Hi Scott,

After accumulating a fairly large graveyard of MJL's, I would strongly suggest that you have either a battery or large cap to absorb the spike.

Attached is one I prepared earlier


John K.

[Rl2003]

Testing without a charge battery???

Did I read this right? I have always tested my circuits with the charge
batteries connected. I have tested without the cap, but only for a short
time as I dont know where all that energy will go if not thru the cap.
I try not to take un-necessary risks when testing, or I would be replacing
trannies all the time.
Most of you have much larger coils that will do more damage than my set-up
as well.

Just my .02

Mark

[genessc]

another method to see the spike...

Howdy,

Another method that I use to see the spike is to use a 12volt 55watt auto lamp (or even a 120v lamp will work, it just may not light up) as the load in place of the charge battery and cap. This shows the spike more closely to how it is before you add the cap for it to sync/decompress into.

One other thing you may want to use is a ne2 lamp over the collector/emitter of the transistors on both sides as that should light up instead of letting the pulse destroy the transistor die.

Maybe start with the big 120vac lamp and work down to a smaller lamp... I'm not sure what sort of power comes out of the spike on such a massive coil. My biggest SG coil is just 6 x 1lbs of 18awg wire on a single pittsfield... it bulges but works.

Regards,
Gene

[txaggie00]

Bedini 2GT "Junior" Update

Hello Everyone!

We were too tired last night to video an update, so we did a quick update this morning. We have the one finished slave coil on there. The coil spacing is nothing like what JB or anyone else has suggested. I am sure it's because there are two coils instead of three. We didn't notice a huge increase in charge time, but there are still a lot of adjustments to be made. It looks like we are going to get our rods in either today or tomorrow, so we hope to have everything minus good batteries by next week. We are also eager to try the SIDAC circuit. The SCR is a pain to work with. I don't remember if Brent mentioned this on the video, but we have notice a lot of current leakage right before the dump and sometimes right after, which really delays the charge time quite a bit. Anyway, here is the update:

Bedini 2GT "Junior" Update video

We would love your feedback as always!

Thanks,
Scott

EDIT: I forgot to mention that we have seen the cap dump up to ~2 amps