Donald Smith Devices too good to be true

[Wistiti]

Strange thing with the spark gap that there is cold air flow coming from it.A little cold breeze. What is that about? Cold electricity?

Does your electrode (anode/cathode) are cold when firing???

the test I have done with mine they became hot...

[tesluh]

need advice please, This relates to Don Smith devices which is why I am posting here.


Lets pretend I was building a tesla coil, the secondary has a resonant frequency of lets say 150khz. The goal of course would be to make the primary also have a resonant frequency of 150 kHz as well right? assuming so, what circuit and components would you use to power the primary coil? It can use car battery or mains power, either way, doesn't matter. and with that circuit how would you adjust the primary so that the frequencies matched?



the reason I ask is because I have hundreds of hours of reading, hundreds of hours of videos watched, way over a thousand dollars spent on neon sign transformers and capacitors and spark gaps and wire and test equipment etc hundreds of hours out in the shop testing different circuits and have looked at and drawn well over 3 hundred related don smith type schematics and with the parts and experience I now have, I still couldn't assemble and build a working tesla coil primary side.

I could spend a few hundred more on some parts that I believe would work (and follow a schematic I also believe would work), but before flushing more down the drain I wanted to get some opinions. Looking for schematic/exact parts to match the schematic/tuning procedure and can only find one good example of that anywhere so far.

Continuous operation would be necessary.

Thank you!!!

[soundiceuk]

Does your electrode (anode/cathode) are cold when firing???

the test I have done with mine they became hot...

Your's isn't running under resonance in Bruce's circuit yet.

What colour is the spark Wistiti, blue?


What colour is the spark Mwtj, white glow?

Got any pictures?

[Wistiti]

Mine is a kind of purple...

[dragon]

need advice please, This relates to Don Smith devices which is why I am posting here.


Lets pretend I was building a tesla coil, the secondary has a resonant frequency of lets say 150khz. The goal of course would be to make the primary also have a resonant frequency of 150 kHz as well right? assuming so, what circuit and components would you use to power the primary coil? It can use car battery or mains power, either way, doesn't matter. and with that circuit how would you adjust the primary so that the frequencies matched?



the reason I ask is because I have hundreds of hours of reading, hundreds of hours of videos watched, way over a thousand dollars spent on neon sign transformers and capacitors and spark gaps and wire and test equipment etc hundreds of hours out in the shop testing different circuits and have looked at and drawn well over 3 hundred related don smith type schematics and with the parts and experience I now have, I still couldn't assemble and build a working tesla coil primary side.

I could spend a few hundred more on some parts that I believe would work (and follow a schematic I also believe would work), but before flushing more down the drain I wanted to get some opinions. Looking for schematic/exact parts to match the schematic/tuning procedure and can only find one good example of that anywhere so far.

Continuous operation would be necessary.

Thank you!!!

If your using one of your NST's to drive the circuit then calculate the capacitor you need to match the NST ( DeepFriedNeon - Tesla Coils ). Then use that capacitance value to calculate the inductance needed to ring at the secondary's frequency.

Make sure the spark gap is shorted (closed) then use a signal generator and scope to fine tune the tank circuit. Sometimes it's easier to leave 3 or 4 turns of bare wire on the primary so you can move a clip around to get it dialed in perfectly.

[tswift]

On the subject of Tesla coils, allow me to again recommend to every experimenter to build one first before starting to experiment with Don Smith stuff. It's easiest to start with a slayer exciter, which is not a true Tesla coil but very similar. You can do this for nearly free, I disassembled a junk microwave oven transformer (MOT) and used the fine secondary wire (about 26 gauge, aluminum) to wind the Tesla secondary around a 3" mailing tube. It's about 14 inches long. The primary I likewise made from the primary wire from the MOT (which is 16 gauge aluminum), 4 turns around an old Quaker Oats cardboard can, which is 5" in diameter. For the slayer circuit you don't need a cap on the primary, but the current draw is drastically less with one. For my arrangement exactly 10 nF is perfect with reducing the primary turns to 3.75 turns.

Once you have it working and tuned as a CW solid state Slayer exciter, it's a simple matter to change over to the spark-excited Tesla coil primary configuration (make sure your primary cap can handle the voltage!). In this mode I can get about 3" sparks using my 10 KV oil burner transformer, but it can also be driven perfectly well from the PVM12 at about 10-20 watts of power. I haven't tried it with the ZVS/flyback driver but there's no reason that won't work as well.

Hopefully all that is old hat for most of the experimenters here, but if you're just getting started I highly recommend it, and you can do it without spending a ton.

Easiest MOT Salvage Tutorial Part 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRoPHKpCYmg

[Elcheapo]

new approach

Hi all;

I see we have over 11000 postings and still no working device.
Well consider this:

What we are trying to accomplish is to bring in some free energy
from our ambient surroundings. We need to create a disturbance in these
surroundings in order to unbalance things.
The earth and proximity has an excess of negative charges, so this
should be a good place to start.

As opposite charges always attract, then build a circuit using as high
a voltage as possible without any arcing. Using a hv diode with a positive
output through a spark gap connected to ground we should get a good spark
across the gap.
The more intense the spark, the more of these negative charges will be attracted into the positive side of our circuit.
The spark needs to occur only when the positive pulse reaches it's maximum level.
Now the more often we can get this to happen, (frequency) the more of these charges that will enter into our circuit.
If we are using 20kv and can get enough of these negative charges
to create 1/4 amp through our circuit, then we've gotten 5000 watts of power.

Frequency is the other main thing we have to think about.
In one of his documents on calculating wire length for coils, Don used 24.7mhz as an example.
If you look at the Kapanadze coil with that large 6 turn winding you'll start
to realize the coils 1/4 wave-length freq. must be at least 20mhz.
Kapanadze also attributed his success to learning about automatic resonance (where you need no caps.)

For a typical system like this using 20mhz the hv diode should be rated at 20kv or more.
Current rating at 1/4 amp or more. Speed rated at 50ns or less.

Just my take on this thing and hope it's a help to someone.

Elcheapo

[med.3012]

Hi all;

I see we have over 11000 postings and still no working device.
Well consider this:

What we are trying to accomplish is to bring in some free energy
from our ambient surroundings. We need to create a disturbance in these
surroundings in order to unbalance things.
The earth and proximity has an excess of negative charges, so this
should be a good place to start.

As opposite charges always attract, then build a circuit using as high
a voltage as possible without any arcing. Using a hv diode with a positive
output through a spark gap connected to ground we should get a good spark
across the gap.
The more intense the spark, the more of these negative charges will be attracted into the positive side of our circuit.
The spark needs to occur only when the positive pulse reaches it's maximum level.
Now the more often we can get this to happen, (frequency) the more of these charges that will enter into our circuit.
If we are using 20kv and can get enough of these negative charges
to create 1/4 amp through our circuit, then we've gotten 5000 watts of power.

Frequency is the other main thing we have to think about.
In one of his documents on calculating wire length for coils, Don used 24.7mhz as an example.
If you look at the Kapanadze coil with that large 6 turn winding you'll start
to realize the coils 1/4 wave-length freq. must be at least 20mhz.
Kapanadze also attributed his success to learning about automatic resonance (where you need no caps.)

For a typical system like this using 20mhz the hv diode should be rated at 20kv or more.
Current rating at 1/4 amp or more. Speed rated at 50ns or less.

Just my take on this thing and hope it's a help to someone.

Elcheapo

Hello everyone ;


sometimes the big problem is the availability of HV parts, sometimes it's the tuning side, in other hands there's some hidden details about Don smith device that lead to unsuccessful replication..

for example Don used 24.7mhz as an example but in one of his video he stated clearly don't worry about the frequency because his device use directly magnetic resonance mechanism instead of electromagnetic resonance system...

[tswift]

OK, some more testing done today. First, I was successful in lighting one lamp bulb. The bad news is I did it by cheating, sort of. It's a simple matter to rearrange the primary side of the circuit into the standard Tesla coil configuration by shorting across C1 and attaching the flyback positive lead to the antenna connection point. The PPV is essentially just acting as a standard spark gap, although being driven like this it doesn't give discrete pulses every time the gap breaks down, it basically stays in a somewhat conductive state and there are pulses at the ZVS driver frequency of roughly 75 KHz. Each pulse is a 500 KHz ringdown, happening 75,000 times a second. In this condition I get a bit of glow on the bulb. However, it's not like it's pulling in any ambient energy, this is just a step-down Tesla coil and the driver power is sufficient to light the bulb. Nothing gets cold, nothing unusual happens. But it is still useful for tuning and proving that everything is working right.

[tswift]

Since it's obvious that using the magnet wire and not true HV insulated wire causes all kinds of problems, I went ahead and started winding a new L1 coil for 500 KHz resonance with a 1 nF (1000 pF) parallel capacitor. Doing some calculations, this gives about 100 uH necessary for the coil The best coil calculator I have yet found is the website at:

RF Inductance Calculator - HAMwaves.com

Unlike a simple inductance calculator, this one treats the coil like a waveguide and computes the "n=0 sheath helix mode", which is a fancy way of saying that it takes into account the spiral path that the energy takes around the coil like Eric Dollard talks about. I have found the calculations to be accurate enough to trust when cutting wire to length. In this case I have an 8" coil form and the wire outside diameter is 0.180". Doing the arithmetic and playing around with the numbers I arrive at about 21 turns of coil to achieve the desired inductance at 500 KHz. In practice I want the inductance slightly less so the resonance is slightly higher, and then I can tune it down to exact by adding some small caps in parallel with the main C2 resonant cap if necessary. As wound, the coil is 20.5 turns and measures 95 uH with the LC meter. In-circuit with the 1 nF cap it does indeed resonate quite close to 500 KHz, as can be seen from the scope trace.

And just like Mwtj, I have found in my bench testing that I'm going to have to get rid of all metal as much as possible, and insulate the heck out of whatever is left. I keep zapping myself on non-connected metal parts close to the circuit when I'm testing. With the new L1 coil in place when I was checking for resonance, I used a metal screwdriver (with thick plastic handle) touching to the antenna connection to get a few sparks on the PPV so I could get a scope trace. This worked OK and I didn't get zapped doing it, but I did get zapped on one of the metal screw heads on the sides of the plywood base plate. So pretty much metal needs to be banished to the maximum extent possible, one I have the layout and configuration like I want I will probably go back to acrylic and use adhesive joints to bond it together.

[tswift]

White spark and blue spark

What colour is the spark Wistiti, blue?
What colour is the spark Mwtj, white glow?

As simple as this seems, soundiceuk brings up a very important point. There is something unique about the white spark discharge that's associated with radiant energy. Normal high voltage sparks have this bluish-purplish color that's hard to photograph but I'm sure everyone here knows what it looks like. This is different than that. I noticed some time back while playing with my desktop Slayer exciter/Tesla coil arrangement that the spark color is not always constant. While running it as a Tesla coil, I held a screwdriver close enough so that it would get a streamer jumping to the tip of the screwdriver on every pulse, 60 times a second. The gap was somewhere around 2 inches. While closely observing the streamers in a fairly dark room, I noticed that the whole streamer was not entirely that bluish/purplish color. Right in the middle of the streamer, halfway between the hot end of the coil and the tip of the screwdriver, there was a tiny section of the streamer where the color changed from purplish to white. Just a couple millimeters out of a 2 inch long streamer. Something like this:

~~~~~~~~~-----~~~~~~~~~
blue/purple white blue/purple

I don't have an explanation for this phenomenon, perhaps someone else does. I'm fairly sure that it's important, and that it's relevant to our attempts. Has anyone else ever observed this?

[soundiceuk]

At the higher voltages the primary will shake because of the frequency. You can feel and hear it. Like a iron core transformer sound.
Strange thing with the spark gap that there is cold air flow coming from it.A little cold breeze. What is that about? Cold electricity?

Me:

What do you make of that?

What is the cool breeze?



Bruce:

Pretty cool, ah. It is the ion wind. Call it what you will.

[soundiceuk]

Taking a guess at the metal.

Tantalum?

Sorry too risky to say as it could get squandered by wrong people.

Bruce hasn't got the monopoly on what the best anode and cathode materials are.

I guess he has tried a lot of materials by now.

I do think you will have interesting results with a well insulated circuit and stage 1 PPV.

There might be better a better combination / shape PPV.

I would just concentrate on fine tuning the basic circuit and see what happens next.

[Elcheapo]

Hello everyone ;


sometimes the big problem is the availability of HV parts, sometimes it's the tuning side, in other hands there's some hidden details about Don smith device that lead to unsuccessful replication..

for example Don used 24.7mhz as an example but in one of his video he stated clearly don't worry about the frequency because his device use directly magnetic resonance mechanism instead of electromagnetic resonance system...

Don said a lot of crazy things to confuse people into building a piece of crap
to protect his company and it's investors.

Stoker was the only one that got it to work, but very poorly.

You sometimes have to use your own logic and only build something
that makes some sense to you.

[tswift]

Bruce:

Pretty cool, ah. It is the ion wind. Call it what you will.

I can confirm something of this kind is happening. Some of it might be due to just the high voltage present causing electrostatic repulsion, not sure if it's all due to that or some other effect is happening. I just made another two bolts for the PPV, call it a "stage 1A" PPV. The steel cathode is pointed and the aluminum anode is rounded, pictures coming later. I had enough time to put them in the circuit and the behavior is definitely different now. For one thing, I sometimes get sparks in the PPV now even after I shut off the ZVS driver! That didn't happen before at any gap setting. Sometimes it also sparks and you can't hear it, or possibly even see it. If I hadn't had the scope going with the HV probe on the secondary I wouldn't have noticed it. I was quite puzzled watching these transients on the scope for minutes after the circuit was shut off. Usually there is a little pop or snap with every spark but you can't hear these. Perhaps this is the "pre-glow discharge" referred to in the paper?