New comer needs any and all help

[jhsmith87]

guess what happened!!! i went to the place that i used to work rebuilding electric motors, and talked to the guy a bit told him what i was trying to do, and turns out he is a fan of bedini. we went to the back to see if he had any of the 23 and 26g i needed. and he had rolls and rolls of small wire, 15lbs each roll.
he didnt have any 26g, so i didnt know what to do, i was stuck should i have gone to 27g or 25g. he had a roll of 25g right there so i went with it. so it ended up being 30lbs wire total. 15lbs of each.
i asked him what he wanted for it, and he said if you'll bring the motor by when your done  you can have it.  he also gave me a hand full of welding rods and an old spool that had a much smaller inner diameter, it seems a bit to long, but it will have to do..

can you believe it 30lbs of wire FOR FREE!!

[TinselKoala]

Well, you've got plenty of wire !! I expect my nine-pound spool of #27 to last me a lifetime; I've already wound a couple of TC secondaries and a bunch of smaller coils like the 800x3 non-Bedini coil and it looks like I've barely scratched the surface of that big spool.

So you have #23 and #25?  Those are almost the same size; I hope that meets with the official approval of the Bedini-monitors. But don't worry, I'm sure your coil will be fine.

Like I said earlier, you can always build up the resistance value you need out of smaller or larger resistors. 1/4 Watt are probably fine for this application, I just hate to use tiny little components when bigger ones will do. Just feel the resistor when it's in use; if it seems too warm to you, change to a larger Watt rating. Especially if it turns brown and starts smoking.... !

For the neon: based on my experience in the video with this coil, I am gonna say that it IS necessary. I was rather surprised at the energy in the spikes, and these will destroy your transistor eventually if they are not channeled away or short-circuited by the neon between emitter and collector. Just get the cheapest "120V Neon Indicator Lamp" from RS, like
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062374
Be sure to get NEON.... they have several other low-voltage lamp assemblies that look the same almost but are 12 volt LED or incandescent... these will NOT work for your purposes.
The neon that you get will have inside it a NE-2 type bulb like I have shown, and a series resistor to limit its current when used as an indicator lamp for a 120 volt appliance. You can either use the whole thing as somebody showed in a picture earlier, or carefully take it apart and just use the neon bulb itself without the resistor.

If you start using the circuit to charge batteries you can probably leave the neon out, because the battery charging will tend to limit the spike voltage. But if you are just running the motor I'd put the neon in.

[jhsmith87]

ok, well looks like i am not going to make it to ratshack today, but i was at walmart and seen a light bulb rated for 120v. it was a small hallogen bulb, not like one for a lamp in the house you plug in the wall, this one looks more like a flashlight bulb. i got it any way, it was only a few bucks. but i am sure that will not work right?

ok you just said something there. if i have a charge battery hooked up i may not need the neon... so since i cant get my hands on a neon not any time that i see to be soon, since we are both building one together lets make one that will charge some thing. say.... a cap if that is a good enough component to charge, if it is not could we run off a 9v and charge a 9v?

the reason i keep saying something about a 9v is that is the only battery i have more than one of. actually i dont even have a 12v battery. all i have to put out 12v is a power supply that plugs in the wall and is made for you to plug cigarette lighter things into, it also has two prongs for + & - it says on the box output 12v 5a.

i dont know if this may be any good, but i have some lipo batteries. some one and two cell lipos, 1 cell is 3.7v and 2 cell is 7.4v. i have a battery charger, i bought it to charge the lipos, but it has many settings on there, you can set it to so many mah cut off, nicad, nihm, lipo, battery and PB battery (whatever that is). i also have a car jump starter, i dont know if you know what that is, but you plug it into the cigarette lighter, or wall outlet, let it charge, and if your car battery is dead one morning you plug it into the cigarette lighter and turn the key on about 2 minutes, and it jump starts the car. i am almost sure its 12v nihm battery inside, i know its 5a out, and i believe its either 2500mah or 5000mah. (i know thats a huge difference but what can i say, its on of the two).

[TinselKoala]

Well....OK.....

First: the bulb you got with a filament in it is not useful for the purpose of the neon. The neon is like a reverse fuse. It does not conduct at all until it "fires" then it has almost zero resistance. So what happens is this: when the coil shuts off, the collapsing magnetic field makes a BIG high voltage spike. It is very very short duration but can be hundreds or even over a thousand volts in this spike. If this is allowed to get to the transistor it can damage it. So the neon sits in there, and as long as the voltage it sees is below 90 or 100 volts or so, it is like an open, disconnected part of the circuit. No current flows through it. But as soon as the voltage hits its "turnon" value, the neon fires and becomes like a straight wire, with near zero resistance. So..... the spike is channeled thru the neon, from the collector to the emitter directly without going thru the transistor.
So you should be able to see why any bulb with a filament in it won't work. You need the neon.

Second: I think you should save your 9v batteries for portable demonstrations. This circuit requires very little current to run, so your 12 volt, 5 A power supply with the cigarette lighter outlets will be perfect. The motor will only be drawing a few tens of milliamps, probably. I would not recommend using the LiPos and definitely do NOT try to charge the LiPos with this circuit, you will probably ruin them and start a dangerous fire. PB means "Lead-acid" battery like your car battery or my little 12 volt 5 A-H battery.

Third: It would be a good idea to have the neon in there even if you are charging something. I am really impressed with these spikes; they are potent for sure.
You can certainly charge a capacitor; I'd rather you did that than try to charge a 9v battery right at first.  Use a cap with a low capacitance at first, like 1 uF or less, and be sure to use one with a high enough voltage rating like 200 volts at least. Monitor the voltage on the cap with a voltmeter because it will charge up quickly. Once you have some experience handling charged capacitors then you can move to larger capacitances but be sure not to exceed the voltage rating on electrolytic caps, or use the wrong polarity: they can explode. Yes, actually explode.
To charge something from the Bedini circuit I posted, just hook the anode of a rectifier diode like 1n4002 to the collector of the transistor. Hook the cathode of the diode to the positive pole of your charge thing, and hook the negative pole of your charge thing to the emitter of the transistor (ground, negative rail, negative connection to power supply).

Fourth: I got mine running. I made the rotor out of a Folger's coffee jar lid, and used two magnets 180 degrees apart on the inside of the lid. Actually 4 magnets, two ceramic bar magnets supplemented with two little NdB button magnets on the backside. I used a brass screw, cut the head off and pointed it on both ends, for the rotor shaft. I used a couple of 1/4-20 setscrews for the pivot bearings. It draws about 60-70 mA while running at full speed, and takes about 30 seconds to charge a 260 uF capacitor to 160 volts using the hookup I described above .... a scary amount of energy when sparked. The neon does go out when charging the capacitor..... but I'd still recommend using the neon anyway to protect the transistor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKN0tSLqIYc

[jhsmith87]

I can't believe you're done already. I'm just now starting the coil. So to keep from getting confused I will to simply start 1 thing after you explain to me how to be done. What's up finish that I will move on to the next thing.

Seriously I can't believe you're already finished. It must really be simple and I'm just not getting something. But hopefully after you walk me through it as I build it thanks by the way. Maybe I can actually get 1 running this time. After all that magnet wire wasn't really free I do have to show him the completed motor haha.

I'm just really hoping I can get this done soon. I guess I'll have to go get that neon bulb after all.

Today must have been my day. I got that wire for free, autozone and a car audio store both gave me several different size spools. Then on my way home from work I stop at my buddies pawn shop he had an old cRT TV. There was a sticker on it that said will take any offer. I asked him and we plugged it up works fine. I gave him 2 dollars for it. I figure there's at least 2 dollars worth of good usable electronics inside, not to mention the magnets in wire.