Water Sparkplug

[carbideTip]

Interesting vid.

YouTube - water test

[jstadwater]

Hey Greg,

When you have time, could you shoot me back a PM on the one I sent you with the transformer part # question and about which 2N3055 had the right specs? I,m holding the boss's credit card and am anxious to order the components you are using to continue testing. The fact that you got the watts usage down that low is definitely great news. Can't wait to install a pair of them on this V-8 here. Thanks again, later..............................Mike

[gmeast]

electro hydraulic forming

Interesting vid.

YouTube - water test

Hi,

What's shown in the video has its basis in a principle used in manufacturing called 'electro hydraulic forming' - EHF It was developed in the 1950's for aerospace. It is one of many processes that falls into the category of high energy forming.

Electro hydraulic forming usually confines a mold cavity, and a metallic piece of material to be formed, in either a water or oil fluid containment. When an arc is discharged in the fluid the resulting shock wave pushes the metal into the mold, forming the part.

But ... it uses far less energy to form the same part in a press using a matched die, but EHF requires only the 'cavity' part of the die and simpler, less expensive tooling overall.

You can Wiki the topic for more details.

Peace,

Greg

[gotoluc]

Way to go Luc!!!

I thought of this for sometime now, unfortunately one thing bugs me, I don't imagine myself building the whole spark plug. Maybe it is easier than I think but I don't know how.

Maybe if one makes a design and ask a manufacturer to build it according to our specs, they might accept but there will be a minimum order quantity.

Maybe by punching a hole trough the center electrode with a laser beam... brainstorming.


Now the question is: How do we sustain plasma long enough without consuming a whole bunch of amps.
Powerful oscillator? Back EMF feedback? Multi-capacitor bank?...

I love this place.


Gibs

Hi Gibs,

I think it would not be all that difficult to make our own plugs. We can start by breaking a plug just to use the thread body. Since we are going to have water in the center of the plug it should stay much cooler than standard so maybe we can use high temperature Epoxy as filler between the tubes? we only want proof of concept to start so it maybe good enough. I'm sure if it works we would have a mass interest and could get it manufactured then.

For a longer duration plasma event at low energy input (if needed) I think it could be done with resonance. I have been playing around with resonance for the past 3 weeks and think it could be used to make the circuit very energy efficient and maybe make the plasma event last as long as we want. I'm no expert at this stuff but it looks interesting. When I have a better understanding of the effect I will share a video on what I have found and we can see if it can be adapted to what we have.

Luc

[gmeast]

geet

Hi all,

I've started building a small semi-GEET reactor for the Bug. It will be much along the test unit Luc began except I will have makeup air both from the crankcase into the top of the reactor as well as from ambient because I'm not closing the loop. An exhaust feed from the intake manifold preheat has proven to be a very convenient source for the hot bubbler supply.

News at eleven. Peace,

Greg

[jstadwater]

Suburban, plasma functional................

Hey Guys,

As you all know, I fried the inverter I had hooked up to my Suburban. The VexUs circuit itself is already functional, just have to build a reliable voltage scource. SO, for this video the VexUs circuit is plugged into a wall outlet for the 115VAC. The QUAD shielded satallite/cable wire is working out very nice. Easy hookups, no shorts to ground, no RF noise on radio, it looks nice, and no interference with my OBD2 program. It was easy as pie to pop a plugwire off the distributor and unscrew the corresponding cable wire from the cable splitter to add in an external plug for video purposes. That way I did not have to undo the connection at the plug end!

This test was to verify that I was actually getting plasma at the plugs, since my discharge cap and voltage tripler are both mounted in the rear floor-board inside the Suburban. I used the farthest connection from the discharge cap to hook up the test plug. I saw no difference in spark intensity or plasma sound, (vs. on the bench) I thought maybe the cap was too far from the "event", I guess it makes it up there just fine.....as you will see in the vid.

My next test will be to use the ECM re-programmer I have and lean out the fuel mixture, one ratio step at a time, and then test it. My program will allow a max of 24 to 1 air/fuel, it will be interesting to see how far I can go with it.

During the vid, I had my boss to switch off the plasma circuit a couple times, notice how long it takes the spark to return to normal. Of course, I am only at idle speed, but I think it speaks to great abounds of the stability of the VexUs circuit, this is a V-8! The plasma created here is with 450VDC and a discharge capacitence of 2.5uF. Here's the vid link:



Plasma in the Suburban, take 1


Mike

[jstadwater]

COOL Greg,

I will DEFINITELY tune back in at eleven, would that be Pacific Standard Time?

Mike

[gmeast]

time

COOL Greg,

I will DEFINITELY tune back in at eleven, would that be Pacific Standard Time?

Mike

Yeah dude ... PST. I'm in Southern California, San Diego county specifically.

Surf's up!

Peace,

Greg

[jstadwater]

I did Navy boot camp in San Diego in '87, it's beautiful out there. When this is all said and done, everyone involved should meet face to face at a central location, won't that be a party! We could discuss everything it took to get where we will soon be...................................Mike

[ashtweth]

Thanks AC, Greg Luc et all for the interesting rants on the air fuel ratio's that's precisely the information that makes your documents stand out, the logic and merit behind it, ill be adding that in later 2night.

Now Jeff (Ozi cell) is making us a custom spark plug to try out shortly, i think he is making a ball tip on it, also got all the Stuff for Luc's test will get a snap of the set up in a few days just need to find the lights, this is using the voltage quad, Schemo and more is updated in your PDF.

Ash

[jstadwater]

Question @ Greg.................

Hey Greg,

Quick question, you said your transistor heat sinks have a thermal resistence of 5. Since I am going to mount a small fan for each transistor, a lower resistence would take the heat from the transistor more quickly, correct? Anyway, if I take heat away from the transistor quicker, and then disipate it from the sink with a fan, I may be able to keep them cool enough on the V-8 setup to just use one unit instead of two......that is the question, do you think that will work for me? I was able to find almost all the parts from DigiKey, I will have to get the ceramic resistors and transformer from somewhere else. Let me know what you think..............................Mike

[Chris31]

Hey Greg,

Quick question, you said your transistor heat sinks have a thermal resistence of 5. Since I am going to mount a small fan for each transistor, a lower resistence would take the heat from the transistor more quickly, correct? Anyway, if I take heat away from the transistor quicker, and then disipate it from the sink with a fan, I may be able to keep them cool enough on the V-8 setup to just use one unit instead of two......that is the question, do you think that will work for me? I was able to find almost all the parts from DigiKey, I will have to get the ceramic resistors and transformer from somewhere else. Let me know what you think..............................Mike

Mike if you use a MOSFET based circuit, in most cases you will get away with small heatsink.

If you want a compact circuit, use a MOSFET with a very low ON resistance. No need for heatsink, no need for fan, providing the circuits are well designed The MOSFETs is only going to cost a few $ more.

By the way did you get the chance to do further test with the plasma under pressure?

[jstadwater]

Hey Chris31,

We fry so many inverters around here, the new design is to be inverter and mosfet free, much less sesitive and more reliable. Thanks....................................Mike

[jstadwater]

Sorry, i missed the last line.

I have to setup my test chamber a little better and then I will go for higher pressure, also plan to test vacuum as well. I want to also set up a chamber with a moveable "piston" if you will, so I can see what type of energy is actually there. Later.................................Mike

[Chris31]

Hey Chris31,

We fry so many inverters around here, the new design is to be inverter and mosfet free, much less sesitive and more reliable. Thanks....................................Mike

Got ya

Sorry, i missed the last line.

I have to setup my test chamber a little better and then I will go for higher pressure, also plan to test vacuum as well. I want to also set up a chamber with a moveable "piston" if you will, so I can see what type of energy is actually there. Later.................................Mike

Cool, cant wait to see the results. Moving that piston will tell us