Bedini Ferris Wheel Regauging Motor

[txaggie00]

Brent,
I put the FET circuit together and have no working results to speak of.
The Cap charged up to 65 volts very quickly and I shut it down before it pops.
I have triple check the circuit and it looks ok but somethings not right.
It will not discharge into the sec. batteries.
My SCR and Led circuit works well and will charge the secondarys some what..
When I removed the two slave coils, the milliamps drop from around 375 to 125.
At this time I am not sure why it jumps up when re-connecting the slaves,
but I am trying some different thing. I let you
know if I get the FET circuit working.
Mark

Hey Mark! Brent tried the FET - SIDAC circuit today. The first time he ran it, the cap charged up to around 67 and then just kind of hung there without discharging. I'm not sure if you are talking about using just a FET or using the FET-SIDAC circuit that RS had posted, but Brent has tried both with not much luck. RS has been working on the FET-SIDAC circuit, so hopefully he can shed some light on that. Aside from that, the SCR is is the thorn in our side. Technically, it's probably the batteries, but we can't do anything about those right now. We have our wheel timed great though. We need to adjust the coils to retard the timing, but as soon as we turn it on, the LED's flash and the cap dumps. After that, the SCR won't shut off and we have to manually turn it off and on to dump the cap. RS has mentioned using a hall to trigger the opto for the cap dump, so that may be an option. I am sure Brent may chime in later, as I may have missed some things, but hopefully we can take a video tomorrow and show you what we are talking about.

@Mark/John K/Brent & Scott/Les K

How did your MJL21193's and 94's measure out beta wise? Did any of you have the issue of the 93's having a much high beta than the 94's?

All of my PNP's had a much higher current gain than the NPN's. When measured on a meter with an hFE setting, the PNP's were 3 times as much as the NPN's.

@Brent

How exactly is it switching better?

Is disconnecting and reconnecting causing a boost in capacitor charging?

Could you possibly make a short video?



Dave

Hey Dave! If I remember correctly, our 93's were higher than our 94's. Using the circuit that JB posted, our 94's measured a little more than half of the 93's (roughly 4.12mV & 7.4mV). Those are really the only numbers for Beta testing that we have (I can confirm tomorrow). It would be near impossible to match the two from the 15-20 of each that we have measured. They don't get near as cold with the 22ohm resistors we added to the base, but they don't get warm either.

The disconnecting/reconnecting isn't so much boosting the capacitor charging as it is letting the cap fully drain to shut off the SCR. We notice that when we disconnect and let the cap settle (about 2-3 seconds), then connect, we get super fast cap charging. We noticed greater charging with the new timing wheel, surprisingly. The charging starts slowing down as the wheel gets faster, which is why we need to adjust the coils, so we can retard that a bit. We are going to try and take a video tomorrow. We are really excited about how fast the cap is charging right now. We have never had it charge this fast. If we can get the dump circuit to work, we would be golden. Yesterday, we took the primary batteries that were at 35V and switched them with the charging batteries and manually controlled the switching and after a minute, they were resting at 41V after it had been off for a while. We were impressed to say the least.

Thanks,
Scott

[BrentA929]

FET circuit

Mark,

I'm glad someone else is working on this circuit...

I am an electrician by trade and electronics is a whole different ball game! Electricity controlling electricity. I hope you figure it out!


By the way here is the other post that I keep going back to in regards to the FET circuit...

nvisser,
After reading your post 44n on capacitor discharge, I can see why it did not work, you can not switch that way, you must look at the potential across the whole battery system. Then invert the switch in the system and it will switch. Think about what I just said, a fet will work fine if you do that.......... Two black wires, one in and one out, look at the IRF260 fet easy to figure the difference in potential between the capacitor and the battery. And look at it for DC SOA.
John B

"Easy to figure the difference," not for me!

Also, Scott was a little off on the numbers. The FET circuit (JB's) that I was working on was when the cap would get stuck at about 67V and the Sidactor circuit would just keep climbing without dumping. I think I saw 100+V on it today. Our cap fills up fast!


Thanks, Brent

[Rl2003]

Yes Scott,
I was talking about the Sidac and Fet circuit, and thats exactlly what mine does.
I put it aside and played with some other ideas today.
But let me say the SCR's are very sensitive. I have four different types and I have burned up three already.
If it is not to hard to try a new one I would. But I would remove your cap from the circuit or drain it first. DO NOT SHORT IT.. that is how I toasted my SCR's.
Now I just remove one side of the cap to be safe.

I started to change from all Parallel to a series/parallel combination and have my
milliamps down to about 60-75. And my RPM's down well under 60. And I am
still charging the secondarys as well. I did play with the slave coils, up, down, back with
no real change to anything. Leads me to believe that the position does not have
to be that perfect. I did advance the timming, and that made a big
difference on the amp draw. It does speed up some too.

Since I am using a optical switch to run this now, I will try the hall on one magnet
to trigger the cap dump. It would dump once every revolution, which is about what
the cap does now.

I will make a new video when I can. Hopefully tomorrow.
Mark

Hey Mark! Brent tried the FET - SIDAC circuit today. The first time he ran it, the cap charged up to around 67 and then just kind of hung there without discharging. I'm not sure if you are talking about using just a FET or using the FET-SIDAC circuit that RS had posted, but Brent has tried both with not much luck. RS has been working on the FET-SIDAC circuit, so hopefully he can shed some light on that. Aside from that, the SCR is is the thorn in our side. Technically, it's probably the batteries, but we can't do anything about those right now. We have our wheel timed great though. We need to adjust the coils to retard the timing, but as soon as we turn it on, the LED's flash and the cap dumps. After that, the SCR won't shut off and we have to manually turn it off and on to dump the cap. RS has mentioned using a hall to trigger the opto for the cap dump, so that may be an option. I am sure Brent may chime in later, as I may have missed some things, but hopefully we can take a video tomorrow and show you what we are talking about.

Thanks,
Scott

[Rl2003]

Brent,
I am a self taught electrical engineer, my father has several Masters degree's
and that is one of them. I had no interest in learning it until a few years ago.
Luckily he still has alot of cool stuff I get to play with...but I still don't know all that
much really. But I will try it at least.
Iam a programer by degree but I don't use that very much anymore..

What did JB mean?? "And look at it for DC SOA."
Mark

Mark,

I'm glad someone else is working on this circuit...

I am an electrician by trade and electronics is a whole different ball game! Electricity controlling electricity. I hope you figure it out!


By the way here is the other post that I keep going back to in regards to the FET circuit...



"Easy to figure the difference," not for me!

Also, Scott was a little off on the numbers. The FET circuit (JB's) that I was working on was when the cap would get stuck at about 67V and the Sidactor circuit would just keep climbing without dumping. I think I saw 100+V on it today. Our cap fills up fast!


Thanks, Brent

[BrentA929]

Dc Soa

Mark,

I believe that DC SOA stands for "Direct Current Safe Operating Area."

Hope that helps!


Brent


*EDIT - I have attached the spec sheet page for the IRFP260 FET that I found from DigiKey that has the DC SOA listed in fig. 8 (highlighted in red)

Brent,
I am a self taught electrical engineer, my father has several Masters degree's
and that is one of them. I had no interest in learning it until a few years ago.
Luckily he still has alot of cool stuff I get to play with...but I still don't know all that
much really. But I will try it at least.
Iam a programer by degree but I don't use that very much anymore..

What did JB mean?? "And look at it for DC SOA."
Mark

[Rl2003]

Brent,
So it looks like any thing over 25 amps and under, 0 to 8 volts will have
"Limited R/DS(on)". Great thats it???? Why did'nt you say so?

I will have to get the books out for this one..I have no clue what that meens, yet.
Mark

Mark,

I believe that DC SOA stands for "Direct Current Safe Operating Area."

Hope that helps!


Brent


*EDIT - I have attached the spec sheet page for the IRFP260 FET that I found from DigiKey that has the DC SOA listed in fig. 8 (highlighted in red)

[BrentA929]

Maybe a clue?

Mark,

Not sure if this helps...but I have also looked at John's patent on pulse charging a battery. He uses the same FET, but in a different configuration. I'm sure we will have to parallel the FETs just like the transistors.

Just throwing this out there. Again, I am clueless, but think this could really help!


Thanks, Brent

Brent,
So it looks like any thing over 25 amps and under, 0 to 8 volts will have
"Limited R/DS(on)". Great thats it???? Why did'nt you say so?

I will have to get the books out for this one..I have no clue what that meens, yet.
Mark

[Web000x]

Brent,
So it looks like any thing over 25 amps and under, 0 to 8 volts will have
"Limited R/DS(on)". Great thats it???? Why did'nt you say so?

I will have to get the books out for this one..I have no clue what that meens, yet.
Mark

Wouldn't "Limited R/DS(on)" mean that the device has an inherit resistance between the Source and the Drain? You can turn the FET all the way on and there would still be a resistance of DS. This would limit the operation of the device which is shown by the chart.

Dave

[Rl2003]

New video

Brent,
I can't veiw that for some reason, I must have something blocking it.
I was looking at the Sidac/FET circuit and I know John said switch the Negitive
so should the FET be flipped over??
I will play with some ideas tomorrow, but I mounted the hall back up and placed
one small magnet on the timming wheel to use it as a trigger. I may use it to hit
the primary while the MJL's are off. Or use it to dump the cap, using a opti,
once per revolution, to see how that works.
I posted a short video of this running with the master coils in series, the salves in
series together and then in parallel with the master.
This is what I see. Parallel seems to draw more amps, but maybe charging better.
In Series the amps are cut in half, maybe more. I still get a good charge as well.
Advancing the timming helped to lower the amps a little more, but it is still not in
the start range with the optical switch in place. I am not to worried about that
because that uses alot of amps anyway.
But get this.. I ran this three times, first for an hour, rested batteries four hours.
Swapped P&S batteries, ran for another hour, rested two hours, swapped back the P&S batteries.
Ran a third time for two hours, rested for two hours.
Start voltage for P/24.71v & S/24.34v.
End voltage for P/24.58v & S/24.51v.
Four hours of run time for a net gain of .05v.
Total useless for any practical purpose but I bet your big wheels will really rock the boat...

Here's my latest vid.

YouTube - Bedini GT3 v29.3
Mark

Mark,

Not sure if this helps...but I have also looked at John's patent on pulse charging a battery. He uses the same FET, but in a different configuration. I'm sure we will have to parallel the FETs just like the transistors.

Just throwing this out there. Again, I am clueless, but think this could really help!


Thanks, Brent

[txaggie00]

Mark,
Great video and test runs! We have soldered everything up on a new board and were hoping to post a video today, but we spent a lot of time adjusting the timing and coils. We are going to try and post a video tomorrow morning. We had to slow the wheel down quite a bit to get better charging and ended up lowering the coils by removing a 48 x 12 x 3/4" thick board we had below the coil platform. That increased the gap between the coils and magnets and slowed it down a bit. We slowed it down further by adjusting the timing wheel to fire about 1/2" past the main coil core. There is a fine line between lowering RPM's and keeping the amp draw low. We positioned the hall further out on the timing magnets to also lessen the on time and decrease the draw from the primaries. When it's really charging, the SCR can't keep up (from what I can tell). As the wheel gets faster, charge time increases, so we may shim the frame some more to increase the coil gap. It won't self start at this point, but JB had mentioned that the re-gauging motor held the wheel in magnetic lock for it to be able to self-start, so maybe this is also what he experienced. There are a lot of variables to this machine, but aside from the cap dump circuit, we are really starting to get a feel for it and somewhat have an idea what to adjust. Initially, I had wanted to use one of the coils to brake the wheel to slow it down so we can keep the self-start, but there is just not enough room with those big coils and small wheel (relative).

Really hope to have something for everyone to see tomorrow.

Thanks,
Scott

Brent,
I can't veiw that for some reason, I must have something blocking it.
I was looking at the Sidac/FET circuit and I know John said switch the Negitive
so should the FET be flipped over??
I will play with some ideas tomorrow, but I mounted the hall back up and placed
one small magnet on the timming wheel to use it as a trigger. I may use it to hit
the primary while the MJL's are off. Or use it to dump the cap, using a opti,
once per revolution, to see how that works.
I posted a short video of this running with the master coils in series, the salves in
series together and then in parallel with the master.
This is what I see. Parallel seems to draw more amps, but maybe charging better.
In Series the amps are cut in half, maybe more. I still get a good charge as well.
Advancing the timming helped to lower the amps a little more, but it is still not in
the start range with the optical switch in place. I am not to worried about that
because that uses alot of amps anyway.
But get this.. I ran this three times, first for an hour, rested batteries four hours.
Swapped P&S batteries, ran for another hour, rested two hours, swapped back the P&S batteries.
Ran a third time for two hours, rested for two hours.
Start voltage for P/24.71v & S/24.34v.
End voltage for P/24.58v & S/24.51v.
Four hours of run time for a net gain of .05v.
Total useless for any practical purpose but I bet your big wheels will really rock the boat...

Here's my latest vid.

YouTube - Bedini GT3 v29.3
Mark

[BrentA929]

Updated link

Mark,

I have updated the link in the previous post...

To be quite honest with you, I don't know. My guess would be that the FET does need to be reversed. JB has several subtle hints through out the thread that leads me to believe that they are reversed. He's not one for conventional, so it wouldn't surprise me.


Thanks, Brent

Brent,
I can't veiw that for some reason, I must have something blocking it.
I was looking at the Sidac/FET circuit and I know John said switch the Negitive
so should the FET be flipped over??
I will play with some ideas tomorrow, but I mounted the hall back up and placed
one small magnet on the timming wheel to use it as a trigger. I may use it to hit
the primary while the MJL's are off. Or use it to dump the cap, using a opti,
once per revolution, to see how that works.
I posted a short video of this running with the master coils in series, the salves in
series together and then in parallel with the master.
This is what I see. Parallel seems to draw more amps, but maybe charging better.
In Series the amps are cut in half, maybe more. I still get a good charge as well.
Advancing the timming helped to lower the amps a little more, but it is still not in
the start range with the optical switch in place. I am not to worried about that
because that uses alot of amps anyway.
But get this.. I ran this three times, first for an hour, rested batteries four hours.
Swapped P&S batteries, ran for another hour, rested two hours, swapped back the P&S batteries.
Ran a third time for two hours, rested for two hours.
Start voltage for P/24.71v & S/24.34v.
End voltage for P/24.58v & S/24.51v.
Four hours of run time for a net gain of .05v.
Total useless for any practical purpose but I bet your big wheels will really rock the boat...

Here's my latest vid.

YouTube - Bedini GT3 v29.3
Mark

[RS_]

Cap Pulsers

Hi All,

I have been playing with the Sidactors, and have found that the Schematic i posted does not work. What you are reporting, is what i am seeing too, it gets to the point that the sidactor conducts current and just sets there. For one point, the sidactor is bleeding current off the cap, and the second point is that the diode in the opto is turning on the cap pulser mosfet a tiny amount, and that bleeds off the cap too....... For the best i got out of it, I split the low side of the sidactor, so that one resistor goes through the diode on the opto, and another resistor goes to the neg side with a Low enough value that it just barely holds the sidactor on when it gets over the VBO, I made the opto resistor a higher value, so that when the sidactor brakes over, the opto just turns on at 10 ma, and most of the current is flowing through the other resistor to gnd until brake over. if you can stop the diode from conducting enough for the mosfet to start conducting, during the VDRM to VBO ramp up part of the wave form.... then the Sidactor bleed off by it's self, may not be enough to hang it up...... the Sidactor needs a Very high Dv/Dt from VDRM to VBO to work correctly, and my small Bedini/Cole Fan Driver - Pulse Charger setup can't do it under the present configuration..... I will continue trying ideas to make this work.....

I also moved the top of the 15V zener directly to the Gate of the mosfet, as i found that, having it as shown in the sch, it clamped on and killed the small zener, and after looking for an hour, and only finding one 15V zener on the place, i moved it so i would not have that problem again, and it could still protect the MOSFET Gate.....

I suggest, that every one use a PIC Micro, or Basic stamp, or a 556 timer PWM to the Opto with 330ohm resistor, to run the Inverted MOSFET Cap Pulser, until I or someone, figures out how to get around the sidactor's limitation's, as it does it's intended job Too well.....

I show the Sidactor Opto MOSFET driver in the Inverted Neg side switching configuration, vs the Pos side switching configuration as shown in the cap pulser patent...
This is what JB is talking about, when he says reverse the Mosfet....!!!! Let's not get off track with this........

If i understood correctly, JB is using a Full Patent Inverted Cap Pulser charger on his BFW, if this is true....?, is there any one doing this yet....? vs. using a 1/2 cap pulser........ I also tryed the sidactor with a Full Patent Inverted Cap Pulser setup on my small fan charger, with the same results.........

RS

[txaggie00]

Bedini 3GT "Junior" Update

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the delay getting this video posted. We spent a lot of time playing with the timing and speed of this machine. We increased the coil gap and adjusted the timing wheel quite a bit to slow it down and get better charging, but it's still not close to where we want it. It is certainly a delicate balance. Anyway, in the video we had adjusted the timing wheel slightly for it to be able to self-start and our amp draw currently bounces between 400-600 mA. We'd like to get that down a little more. We were getting much faster charging yesterday, but our amp draw was a little high.


Bedini 3GT "Junior" - Timing and Charging Update

Thanks,
Scott

[Rl2003]

Thanks for the video update guy's.
It looks like your almost there.
Mark

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the delay getting this video posted. We spent a lot of time playing with the timing and speed of this machine. We increased the coil gap and adjusted the timing wheel quite a bit to slow it down and get better charging, but it's still not close to where we want it. It is certainly a delicate balance. Anyway, in the video we had adjusted the timing wheel slightly for it to be able to self-start and our amp draw currently bounces between 400-600 mA. We'd like to get that down a little more. We were getting much faster charging yesterday, but our amp draw was a little high.


Bedini 3GT "Junior" - Timing and Charging Update

Thanks,
Scott

[Web000x]

Here's my latest vid.

YouTube - Bedini GT3 v29.3
Mark

If you parallel the capacitors, the plate area doubles so you have twice the capacitance. Your bank would be 8200 uF instead of 2050 uF.

@Brent
This cap dump circuit that Nvisser showed looks promising. http://www.energeticforum.com/renewa...tml#post129509

Dave