The Old Standard Ignition System. Battery. Coil. Points. And Condenser....

[Magluvin]

Found this for those that do not know the wave forms.
https://www.slideshare.net/kimmimaru/waveform-ignition
Funny thing about that link,, Keshe is also on that page,,


Funny stuff about voltage run levels,, if my Mini Cooper goes above 14.2 it sets an error,, below 13 and it won't run,, then my old Chevy truck would often hit 14.7 without an issue,, it could go higher if I ran it full field and at high RPM.


Anyway,,  if you look at the waveforms you will notice that there is a much higher firing line voltage than the burn line voltage,,

Hey webby

Thanks for the scope shot thread.   Its interesting to see what others show..    Look at all the shots and then look just at the ones that make claims of what you would see if the condenser has issues.

Do you see any evidence of resonance in any of the scope shots as compared to the specific shots that claim condenser issues? Any resonance at all?

Tuned up the relay timing with the cap to get more switch open time by adding a smaller 44ohm resistor to the power in to the 160ohm relay coil. This way it takes a little time for the cap to charge up enough to to give me more contacts open time.

Adding the ballast resistor changed things a bit. It gave me something I said I have never seen before.. It is 8 8ohm resistors in parallel and measures very close to 1 ohm exactly. And thinking about the circuit a bit more has me really wondering about something with these circuits..A very perplexing issue indeed. Some thing that sort of blows my mind really. 


Will be doing the vid here after I get some eats.  It will partially vindicate brads claim thus far, but I still have 1 question and will demonstrate in the vid.


Be back in a little while...

Mags

[Magluvin]

This posting is the revenge of the battery and the big spark V2.0.

In my original write up I thought that during the plasma burn the battery was putting power into the plasma via the coil acting like a step-up transformer and I was wrong.  Clearly, while the capacitor is being charged up by the primary there is no burn until the "breaking point" when the secondary takes over and ignites the plasma and the core dumps its energy into the plasma via the secondary.  It's impossible for the battery to be contributing to the burn under these conditions because current has stopped flowing counter-clockwise through the loop.

Here is where the battery gets its revenge because it can still put extra energy into the core _after_ the switch opens and _before_ the plasma burn starts.`  Note however this assumes that the primary has been energized for considerably less than 5 L/R time constants and there is still room to increase the current flow in the primary.  So this may be helping give you a more energetic spark in a running engine, but not on a bench test where you are doing the switching by hand.  (This makes me think more and more that the reason you get the more energetic spark with the capacitor is because it protects the contact points from arcing and a lot of energy is lost when there is arcing across the contact points.)

Just look at the attached images.  The bottom image shows the ignition coil circuit.  Look at the battery, it is in the loop ready to push.  What happens when the switch first opens?  The capacitor acts like a short circuit.  If there is still available headroom in the core to store energy, then the battery may indeed contribute to the more robust spark by adding some extra energy to the core for a fraction of a millisecond.  This just illustrates one more time how important it is to construct a timing diagram if you really want to understand what is going on.

In the attached simulation I simply played with component values to demonstrate the principle.

Simulator web page:  http://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html
Sim URL:  http://tinyurl.com/ybtbekk6

let me ask you something M..  Why the drastic changes in component values in your circuit sim screen shot?   I remade you circuit with your specs and I also redid it to the right with the actual component values we are specifically looking at in this thread.

Yours is once more, as I have complained to you before, that you are using padded parts values and you stopped the sim to not show the resonant ring when the switch opens. 

Mags
Mags

[Grumage]

Hi Guys.

Before I went into the EE world I did my first year of Motor Vehicle Technology, CGLI. This was 40+ years ago, before all this electronic wizardry took control.

The " Condenser " was described as a device to rapidly discharge the primary on the opening of the points. This made for an improved HT spark. Also reduced arcing/pitting.

The "Ballast resistor " was fitted to some vehicles to aid cold starting. They used an ignition coil with an operating voltage of between 6 and 9 volts with the resistor in series to the supply. On initial start up the coil was hit with a full battery voltage making a really big spark but after a few seconds the ballast would heat up, increasing in resistance and lowering the voltage applied to the primary winding.

That's what I remember from my college days, I actually prefer Magneto's, but that's another story.    

Cheers Grum.

[Magluvin]

Here is the code for Circuit Sim for the pic I have shown above, in case anyone wants to see it work for themselves

$ 1 5.0E-6 10.20027730826997 50 5.0 43
r 112 288 288 288 0 0.1
c 288 288 288 496 0 3.0E-4 -157.40087982799082
l 112 496 288 496 0 0.5 -7.8234695716679
v 112 288 112 496 0 0 40.0 100.0 0.0 0.0 0.5
w 288 496 368 496 0
s 288 288 368 288 0 1 false
w 368 496 368 288 0
w 928 496 928 288 0
s 848 288 928 288 0 1 false
w 848 496 928 496 0
v 672 288 672 496 0 0 40.0 12.0 0.0 0.0 0.5
l 672 496 848 496 0 0.0057 0.001198957437496913
c 848 288 848 496 0 1.0E-7 -12.102049132159332
r 672 288 848 288 0 1.0
o 3 128 0 291 160.0 12.8 0 -1
o 0 128 0 35 1.25 12.8 0 -1
o 10 64 0 35 20.0 12.8 1 -1
o 13 64 0 35 20.0 12.8 1 -1


Mags

[Magluvin]

Hi Guys.

Before I went into the EE world I did my first year of Motor Vehicle Technology, CGLI. This was 40+ years ago, before all this electronic wizardry took control.

The " Condenser " was described as a device to rapidly discharge the primary on the opening of the points. This made for an improved HT spark. Also reduced arcing/pitting.

The "Ballast resistor " was fitted to some vehicles to aid cold starting. They used an ignition coil with an operating voltage of between 6 and 9 volts with the resistor in series to the supply. On initial start up the coil was hit with a full battery voltage making a really big spark but after a few seconds the ballast would heat up, increasing in resistance and lowering the voltage applied to the primary winding.

That's what I remember from my college days, I actually prefer Magneto's, but that's another story.    

Cheers Grum.

Hey Grum

Puttin up the vid soon here.  Ill explain more in the vid.

Mags