Ωmega Machine - My gift to the world.

[Yucca]

If someone gets this working, how much life could you really expect to get out of the relays working that hard and fast all the time? Not a negative remark by any means, but is there something that can be done to prolong the lifespan? I'm thinking that even if the relays were rated at 1,000,000 cycles, wouldn't they wear out extremely fast being used in this manor?

My 24V coil relay when configured to self oscillate goes at about 500Hz. So 1 megacycle will take 2000 seconds or just over half an hour! It will probably give more than 1 megacycle though as it´s only switching enough current for it´s own 24V coil and it´s contacts are rated at 125V10A. But still as you say it wouldn´t last long.

Maybe if the units can be built with COP>1 then special relays could be made with cheap contact refill packs or could use replaceable carbon contact brushes?

Yucca.

[Yucca]

Hi Nightblade,

Do you think it would work also if the DPST switches were replaced with N-channel and P-channel FET pairs? This would make automatic sequencing of the switching easier to implement.

Could you possibly add them to your sim and see if it still rises.

Yucca.

[NightBlade]

The relays could possibly be replaced with coils and FETs. As long as its self switching the back emf spikes can be collected. Im not really concerned about the DPST switches as they are closed for all but the inital startup. I doubt a knife switch would wear out even under very high voltage use. I will attempt to replace the relays with half a transformer and a FET and see what happens.

[Yucca]

OK, I didn't realise that the DPST switches were only manipulated at startup, I should've read more slowly.

I have done some initial testing with a relay (SPDT 24V coil 125V10A contacts) and two caps (470uF 200V) I used a bridge to catch the BEMF in the second cap as the relay oscillates off the first. I was suprised to be able to do quite a few swaps of the caps and keep ~80% of the energy each swap even though I was repeating the sequence loosely by hand.

I think I will have a go at making your circuit, I have lower voltage caps and higher voltage coils but it'll at least buzz for a bit if nothing else.

Yucca.

[hartiberlin]

The relays could possibly be replaced with coils and FETs. As long as its self switching the back emf spikes can be collected. Im not really concerned about the DPST switches as they are closed for all but the inital startup. I doubt a knife switch would wear out even under very high voltage use. I will attempt to replace the relays with half a transformer and a FET and see what happens.

Would probably not work,
as you need the sparking to get additional energy into the circuit so to have a selfrunner.

The same applies to the Newman motors.

With just electronic transistor or MOSFET commutation you will not get the recharge effect of the batteries.

Regards, Stefan.