Bogging Down the Bedini

[citfta]

My apologies Earthbound.  I did not intend to offend you.  Because you had never responded with any results from the efforts of those trying to help you I assumed (bad idea) that you must not be following the advice given you.  I agree that sometimes threads get misdirected but that is usually not the case with a thread about a build someone is having trouble with.  A thread with a title like "Problems with my Bedini" will usually get you help.  Then as you post new problems that thread automatically comes back to the top to be seen by those trying to help you.  And unless they turn that function off on this forum they will also get an email telling them there has been a reply and by whom so they can again come back to give further help.  And the last thing to remember is that no one can make any real progress helping you if you don't report back on what happened when you followed their advice.  If that didn't fix the problem then they can suggest trying something else.

The following is not meant just for you but for anyone wanting to build and experiment with electronics.  Your question about whether or not you needed a bridge rectifier clearly indicates you have not taken the time to learn even the basics about electronics.  NONE of us was born knowing how electronic things work.  We all had to learn.  And learning takes some effort and time.   There are many free electronics courses on the internet.  So there really is no excuse for not taking the time to learn the basics.  I am talking about what is the difference between AC and DC.   What are all the common components and how are they used.  What is the difference between volts and amps.  You really need to learn all these things BEFORE starting into experimenting with electronic devices.  Not learning them will only cause a lot of frustration and expense as you keep damaging parts trying to get things to work.  Would you attempt to go on a week long hike into the wilderness without a map and without learning to read a compass?  And of course without a GPS device.

Now to try and help you with your Bedini project, please answer the following questions.  Did you connect a bridge rectifier to the output of one of the power coils?  Did you make sure it was connected correctly with the ~ connections connected to the coil.  Did you connect the plus and minus to the cap?  If you did all that did it still bog down your machine?

I will be watching for your reply and will answer as soon as I can.  I have helped probably a dozen or more people get their Bedini type machines running.

Respectfully,
Carroll

[earthbound0729]

Firstly,
Pirate,
Just want to thank you for your Circuit posting. Your circuit appears to be the same as Bedini's except you added a pot in front of the 470 ohm resistor. I've seen Daftman's circuit which has a pot too. to help manage the trigger timing better, I suppose. Feel free to educate me.

Now on to answer you Carroll.

Did you connect a bridge rectifier to the output of one of the power coils?  Did you make sure it was connected correctly with the ~ connections connected to the coil.  Did you connect the plus and minus to the cap?

I did both indeed. Included is a picture of my bridge rectifier fromwww.circuitstoday.com after a Google search and looking at various other circuits. This one is straight forward.
Initially I used a single 35 volt 1000uf cap with only the single main wire from my #1 wire set. All of my main coil wires are labeled and matched to each other.

If you did all that did it still bog down your machine?

Not on this attempt. I also tried charging my 12 volt 18 AH battery, which did very poorly with only a single main coil, although it did not bog down. Using a single 12 volt battery I was generating about 4.47 AC volts from a single Main coil wire set.
Currently I am charging 2 each 200 volt 680uf capacitors in parallel through the bridge rectifier. They are not wanting to get past 60 volts. They are older capacitors from a wide screen rear projection TV, so maybe that is a factor.

The Neon never lit up once using a single or dual 12 volt battery. I don't know whether that is good or bad.


By using the standard Bedini SSG with 2 batteries (Run-Charge), I was able to get about 7.74 volts AC from each Main coil wire set. I never read about that in the Bedini Handbook, nor did I see the AC voltage mentioned either.

For whatever I did differently tonight, everything seems to be working, but that is the voice of the blind. Again, I have no elaborate oscilloscope nor easy access to one I'm sure, but I would like to know that the radiant energy is actually there and doing its job.
Any suggestions would be appreciated Carroll. Also if you have a particularly good beginners guide to electronics I am open. Books I can afford if they are in print, plus I do see plenty of Youtube vids.

Thank you all.
earthbound (Dave)

[citfta]

Hi again,

Now we are starting to make some progress.  You really need a pot in the trigger circuit.  That is the only way to adjust the circuit for best performance.  Well moving the wheel closer or farther from the coil also adjusts it somewhat.  But your primary way of getting the best performance is with the pot in the trigger circuit.  You can put a 1 K pot before the resistor and change the resistor to a smaller value like 100 ohms or so.  None of these values have to be exactly right since you can adjust with the pot.

You did not include a picture of your bridge rectifier but that is not really that important.  Most of them are pretty much the same except for voltage rating and current rating.  The shotkey type also switch faster which helps the system to be a little more efficient.  They also have less voltage drop across them which again also helps the system be more efficient.

You mentioned you were only getting 4.47 volts AC from a single main wire.  You also mentioned you do not have a scope so I have to assume you were measuring the AC with a meter.  You will not get an accurate AC voltage reading with a meter.  The signal consists of some very short pulses with a pause between the pulses.  Most meters cannot measure that accurately.   The 60 volts you measured on the caps is probably pretty close to the correct voltage as the cap will charge close to the peak voltage being put out by the coil.  Also 60 volts is a reasonable voltage to get from this type circuit.  Let me explain a little about how this works.

First I need to say that 3/4 of the videos you see on YouTube about this type of technology are just plain garbage and totally or almost totally wrong.  You can believe me or not but I have worked in electronics for over 50 years and worked on this type technology for the last 8 years.  I have not seen any evidence yet that there is anything like radiant energy in any of this technology.  That term is used to sell videos and books.  As far as I can tell it doesn't exist in the real world.

So what are we working with in this type technology?  When you apply power to a coil there is a delay in the current build up because of the inductance of the coil.  Depending on the amount of wire and the core material the inductance can be quite large or pretty small.   Inductance is the resistance to change in current flow.  How that works is like this.  When you apply voltage to a coil the current starts to flow.  As soon as the current starts to flow it creates a magnetic field that opposes the current flow.  The higher the inductance the stronger the magnetic field.  Since current is just starting to flow the magnetic field is expanding.   The expanding field cuts across the wires of the coil inducing a current in the wire that opposes the current we are trying to push through the wire with our voltage.  If the current were to stop increasing the magnetic field would not be expanding and there would be no induced opposing current.  So the expanding field keeps increasing in strength as the current keeps increasing until we reach a point where the resistance of the coil limits the amount of current through the coil.  I know this is a little hard to understand so please read it several times to try and grasp the idea.  All you really need to know is that inductance resists current change and limits how fast you can get current flowing into a coil.

So what does that have to do with the "radiant energy" or inductive spike or flyback spike?   As I have already stated inductance is the resistance to change in current through a coil.  So what happens when we try to turn off the current going through the coil.  The current wants to keep going.  That works like this.  The magnetic field we created is still there anytime current is flowing.  If a steady current is flowing then the magnetic field is steady and thus it is not resisting the current because the strength of the magnetic field is not inducing any counter force to the current.  I hope that makes sense.  At this point we say the coil has reached saturation.

Now we turn off the voltage.  Since we are trying to turn off the coil the magnetic field starts to collapse.  As soon as it starts to collapse it induces a current into the coil that tries to keep the current flowing in the same direction as it was.  You will see a lot of videos that claim the current reverses.  THAT IS WRONG.   The current does not reverse.  It tries to continue in the same direction.  This is called the inductive spike, kickback, flyback and a lot of other names which are most of the time wrong.  If you doubt about the direction of the inductive kickback I have a thread on this forum where we look at that in depth.  You can clearly see what happens on some of the scope shots posted by some of the members.

This inductive spike wants to go somewhere.  An amazing property of the inductive spike is it will generate a voltage high enough to get it to go somewhere.  If it sees a low resistance the voltage will be low.  If it sees a high resistance it will generate a high voltage to be able to go somewhere.  This makes the spike very useful for reconditioning bad batteries.  As the battery gets sulphated the internal resistance goes up.  The spike just increases the voltage to overcome the resistance and helps to get rid of the sulphation.  This is the biggest advantage of the Bedini circuit.  It makes a great battery reconditioner.  However it does not make a good battery charger.  The current from the spike is just too low to charge a good battery if the battery is very large at all.  I am not surprised it did a poor job of charging a 18 ah battery.

I don't know why your neon did not light up unless it was because the system is not tuned properly.  However you don't really want to see the neon lit.  It should only light if you don't have a good connection to the charge battery.  The neon is a safety device to keep from damaging your transistor.  The neon gives the spike a safe place to discharge without going through the transistor and damaging the transistor.

I don't really have a good link for a study guide for electronics or any books that are not very old.  One of the very best books you can get and even an old one is a book that teaches Ham Radio operators the basics of electronics.  That book is put out by the American Radio Relay League or just called ARRL and the book is the Radio Operators Handbook.  It starts out assuming you no nothing at all about electronics and takes you all the way to building your own radio station if you want to go that far.  They  put out a new version of this book every few years but even one 10 years old or so would be a great place to start.  You can probably find some on Amazon pretty cheap.

To look for some classes online just type Electronics 101 or basic electronics classes into your search bar.  Try some different ones until you find a teaching style that agrees with the way you like to learn.  Just do not depend on YouTube for a proper education.

And congratulations on getting it working.  I think if you add a pot to the trigger circuit you will be able to get it working like you want it to.

If you have more questions just ask.  Keeping things all in one thread helps to keep track of what has been done and what has worked and what hasn't.  It also makes it much easier to review how things are going.

Take care,
Carroll

[earthbound0729]

1st response to Carroll.
I thought I had attached this pic, but apparently not.
Tried to make it self-explanatory.
earthbound

[citfta]

That looks good.  My only question about it would be, are the ends of the diodes soldered together or just twisted together?  For any serious effort in electronics you will eventually need to learn how to solder.  There are some YouTube videos about that that are pretty good.  Twisted together wires and the little proto-boards have a bad habit of turning into loose connections that can drive you crazy trying to figure out why your circuit suddenly quit working and then works and quits.  Laying the parts out on the schematic is also a good idea in order to help you keep everything straight.

Later,
Carroll