First Newman machine - Big Back Current Spikes lighting up Incandescent bulbs

[hartiberlin]

Hi All,
I wanted to present again some more technical inside views for those who replicate the Newman machines...

Especially to Russ Griess, who is currently doing a real amazing job by replicating the second Newman machine
and trying to fully understand each part of the machine in detail.

As the smaller Newman machines have much less coil capacitance, the Back Current spikes with them
don´t have so much energy in them and are much smaller, so I will show it on Newman´s first big machine,
that was shown at a press conference in Capitol Center ,
Landover Maryland
to the public.

Watch this movie here from Minute 29:10:
https://youtu.be/CrJIzrmX1mI?t=29m10s

There you see his first big machine on the stage and he had in series with the battery several incandescent light bulbs,
that lighted only up, when the commutator switched or the current was reversed via the commutator and the big spark
jumped between the graphite commutator and the copper commutator ring.
See:
https://youtu.be/CrJIzrmX1mI?t=29m55s
Unfortunately only seen for a few seconds in this movie...

So you can also see the scope shots there :

https://youtu.be/CrJIzrmX1mI?t=30m
and the next few seconds, showing the input current over time i(t)
and you only can see the big back current spike, like a triangle below the zero line
at this scale of the scope...

The small input current is almost not visible at this setting...

These triangle like big back current spikes which flow back to the batteries then
light up these incandescant lamps there.

The small input current during the other time does not
light them up !

So you can see, that really more energy is coming out of the machine than you put in...

Also you get the mechanical output power of the magnet rotor out too for free then.

I hope this helps and will also help Russ to further research his machine in this area...

The graphite and copper is really needed at the mechnaical commutator and in my
view it is a direct conversion of carbon via this sparking into additional energy. so
you just oxidize the carbon graphite brush via the spark and this way additional energy
comes into the circuit and lights up these incandescent light bulbs.

Think of it like an additional galvanic cell, where the copper and the graphite
are the dissimular metals and the spark is the electrolyte, so you have a battery
effect putting free electrons into the Newman circuit and lighting up the light bulbs...

I hope this helps.

Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

Russ, you might add some 100 nF or 1 uF capacitors to taps of your coil in parallel,
so you will have really a few LC tanks in series.
This will help get a better and bigger "stray capacitance" of the coil and you will
have a larger back current spike this way, without needing to build such a huge machine
what Newman had....

I guess this way, we could also scale this machine way down and use less
wire, so to have optimized LC tanks in series which are switched by the
mechanical commutator with the graphite copper segments as an additional  galvanic
cell...

Hope this helps.

Regards, Stefan.

[telecom]

About 30 years ago I was using a small ac motor and was turning it on and off.
Everything went fine except occasionally when I was turning off, it generated
a huge energy spike which was melting the switch, and when I used relays - was melting
relays + all the traces on a PC board.
The power was really remarkable, like a micro nuclear explosion.
I started using a bucking arrangement with varistors, and even they would sometimes blow up!
Perhaps this is the same effect.

[hartiberlin]

@telecom,
yes, that could really be the case...

Well Russ answered:

Thanks Stefan.

I have read everything i could find. I also have tested most all the configurations that i can think of.

However,  i have not seen the results shown on those scope shots.

It feels there is a few key things that have to be in place.
I will rethink and re visit some of thses things.

From my experience so far adding caps is not helpfull. The result i see when doing so is that the  cap switching polarity just destroys the brush / conutator.

And eats more input power. Charging the cap on the next 1/2 cycle.

This coil sure dose not act the same as the bigger sized larger coils from all my tests so far. However i dont have anything to compair it to either. Not on my bench...

More to do for sure..

Thanks for taking the time to post and help!!!

~Russ   

And then I added:

Hi Russ, for these big current spikes to happen, you need to fix the rotor versus commutator angle this
way, that it is not going at the maximum rotation speed(motor configuration), but more in a generator state,
so the commutator has to switch, when the magnet still pushes magnetic field into the coil....
also it is important to have graphite versus copper on the commutator, so the there is a big spark at this moment...
also a bigger cap than 1 uF is really not good, also it could be good to connect the cap not directly across the coil, but only
to inner taps of the coil...
Yes, with smaller models of these coils it is really hard to get such a big current backspike...
Just play with the angle of commutator versus rotor angle, so you set where the rotor is reversing the current at which
angle of the rotation of the magnet...
Good luck ! Regards, Stefan.

[hartiberlin]

Here is a version of a Newman coil that can be improved this way via e.g. 1uF high voltage rating Caps on a few taps of the coil.

Maybe also only 100 to 470 NanoFarads should be used... Must be tested...

This way you will have several LC tanks in series that resemble more his first big coil
of the very first machine...where he had these huge back current spikes...

Also in the video here at thus minute 29:47 :
https://youtu.be/CrJIzrmX1mI?t=29m47s
you can see, that these incandescent light bulbs only lighted up,
when the commutator REVERSED the current in the coil ....
This was just a simple commutator that only reversed the coil current... No shortout segments...
You can see it from the magnet rotation, that the lightbulbs only light up 2 times per rotation, when
the current in the coil is reversed...

So this way by improving the capacitance of the coil, it could maybe also achived, that we will
have these big back current spikes also with less wire and thus cheaper Newman generators could be build...

Regards, Stefan.