New comer needs any and all help

[jhsmith87]

Great instructions coffman! Thanks..
I'm at ratshack now please tell me the right resistors to use make sure to let me know if its 8th 4th half watt or what.
Also could I have this work on a 9v battery? If so what do I need to get here. I have all the transistors y'all have mentioned.

[TinselKoala]

According to this diagram by Bedini, you can run on a nine-volt battery, if you have the right number of turns on your coils. I haven't built this version myself so I can't testify, but I think lots of people have done it. Since you are having so much fun, I think I'll build one alongside, and maybe we can help each other figure out how to get them working. I don't have two different gauges of wire, so I'll be doing three windings of the same #27 magnet wire and connecting two in parallel to make the thicker wire equivalent.

You can't go wrong with larger Watt (power) handling resistors, if you have the physical room for them. I find that my JT circuits need 2 or 3 Watt resistors in the base circuit, since they handle high currents and do get hot. I don't know if Radio Shack will have high-power resistors in the values you need. If necessary you can "build up" a higher power handling resistor out of smaller ones. For example, if you take two, 100 Ohm 1/2 Watt resistors and put them in parallel, you will have a 50 Ohm, 1 Watt equivalent. But you should be able to find a 680 Ohm, 1/2 watt resistor easily enough. If it gets really hot during operation you can build up a higher power equivalent if necessary.

Also, don't worry if you can't find the exact specified value for ohms, or capacitance if you need caps. You can build up the correct value out of smaller or larger resistors or capacitors (see Wiki on how to calculate series and parallel resistances, series and parallel capacitances) , and all components have a tolerance range anyway. Especially caps, they will vary by 20 percent or more sometimes and still work fine for most purposes. For the diode, specified 1n914, you can use just about any fast switching diode like 1n4148, even your dual Schottky rectifier from your old monitor would probably work. (one side of it). But Radio Shack will have the 1n914. You might want to get some more robust diodes to play around with as well, like the 1n4001 thru 1n4007 rectifiers.

Apparently Radio Shack doesn't have the simple, bare NE-2 style neon bulbs any more. The mounted neon indicators that are for 120 V service all have resistors inside them but they are still suitable. If I didn't have my big box of NE-2s,  I'd get the cheapest one from Radio Shack and take it apart to get the bare neon bulb out of it; this will be better for your transistor protector neon use than using the stock ones with resistors, but probably isn't strictly necessary.

You can order whatever you need from DigiKey over the internet and in most cases it will arrive in your mailbox in three days.

[jhsmith87]

OK great your gonna build one wit me great. Although I do not have any more wire so I'll have to wait to get some. Hopefully I can have some by tomorrow. I used to work at a place that rebuilt motors and he usually sells me wire by the pound. Only thing is I'm not sure how many pounds to get. I know my spool is very small and don't take much to make ten turns.
But if you could tell me again what sizes and about how heavy u think I should get we could get it started hopefully by tomorrow

[TinselKoala]

OK.... well, I just wound a coil "sort of" according to the Bedini diagram above and my wire. I have a big spool, over nine pounds, of #27 magnet wire, so I'm trying to use it up. I took two smaller spools and wound them up so now I have three spools of #27 AWG enameled magnet wire. I made a bobbin using my hole saw to cut out some disks and I used a steel bolt for the core, it's a number 10 bolt and I put a piece of heatshrink on the bolt to space the end disks at 1 1/2 inch apart. Then I chucked the whole thing in the drill and took the three strands of #27 from the three spools and wound 800 turns onto the bobbin. Before I started I twisted the two ends from the smaller spools together so I could tell which were going to be the "thick" wire. I made some little holes in the end pieces for the wire ends to come out.

The 800 x 3 turns of #27 wire, the bolt, the end pieces and the feed wires altogether weigh about 9 1/4 ounces. So you can figure up or down from there for your wire, whatever's available. There are online calculators that will tell you exactly how much weight, length, number of turns, etc for coils of all types, just google "coil wire calculator" and have at it.

I also made a video showing testing this coil with a 2n3055 transistor and some magnets spun by the drill. I'm uploading it to YT now and I'll post a link when it's done.

(the weight of the ruler is not included in what's shown on the scale)

[jhsmith87]

For some reason the attachment won't load on my phone. I don't really understand what u mean by disc. Did the wire get wrapped on the disc. And what do u mean by tested the transistor out. How did u do that and how do u know u passed or failed the test..
Glad u got your coils done. Wait on me to do mine now ha. I'll have the wire tomorrow. I guess I'll get at least 2lbs of 22 and 26g