Joule Thief

[electricme]

Pirate at war with the Bees

[Pirate88179]

Jim:

I am still laughing!!!!!!!  I am going to print that one out and hang it on my wall.  Well done sir!!!!!!!!  You captured the moment perfectly.


Bill

PS  I am not up against a squadron, they are more like an entire air wing.  But, not for long.  I will enforce this No Fly Zone.

[electricme]

Gary:

Jim

I have never tried putting the primarys in parallel before.
If you put the primarys in series you will have a candy cane coil made with transformers rather than toroids.

I plan on playing with the same kind of idea  tomorow.
I have a couple of camera circuits that are AA but only 4 connections on the transformer.
I also have a fuji AA that has 5 connections on the transformer.  If the 5th connection is a center tap for the primary making a JT with that one will be a snap.


Getting back to the candy cane thing.
If you put  your primarys and secondarys both in series  it works for the most part like  one big inductor  with the an  equivalent number  of wraps

I do think  you will be happy with what  you find .......there are lots of possible combinations with candy cane  coils........ one is to put  string of primarys in series then  try to light a CFL with each secondary

I look forward to seeing your results


gary

Actually I havent ever pulled the transformer off a camera board, and I can hardly wait for the cameras that are in the mail to me, when they get here I will be seeing what I can do with this parallel transformer idea.

If you manage to unsolder a hi Voltage coil, you will need to find the primary winding, it will have a lower resistance on the multimeter, the secondary will be a lot higher.

To make sure both coils are firing at the same time, they need the primaries to be in parallel.
The secondaries need to be in series, and I think the secondary ends you solder together, need to be connected to battery earth. This leaves you with just a single output connection from each transformer, it's these that you solder the CFL to.

My thinking is each coil can put out about 350 volts, add both coils together and you have 700 odd volts to power the CFL tube directly.

After a lot of dredging I found a hi voltage circuit with four transformers all connected with the primaries in parallel and the secondaries in series, take a look here  http://kb3ewy.com:8000/old/images/4pack2.GIF

This will give you an idea where I am headding with this now.

jim   

[Pirate88179]

Jim:

I think you are going to make us blow things up... ha ha!  Seriously, I have always liked the idea of finding out what something can do, not what it was designed to do.  Let's push it all that we can.

Bill

[resonanceman]

If you manage to unsolder a hi Voltage coil, you will need to find the primary winding, it will have a lower resistance on the multimeter, the secondary will be a lot higher.

To make sure both coils are firing at the same time, they need the primaries to be in parallel.
The secondaries need to be in series, and I think the secondary ends you solder together, need to be connected to battery earth. This leaves you with just a single output connection from each transformer, it's these that you solder the CFL to.

My thinking is each coil can put out about 350 volts, add both coils together and you have 700 odd volts to power the CFL tube directly.

After a lot of dredging I found a hi voltage circuit with four transformers all connected with the primaries in parallel and the secondaries in series, take a look here  http://kb3ewy.com:8000/old/images/4pack2.GIF

This will give you an idea where I am headding with this now.

jim

Jim

I have taken a few camera boards apart.......it is not easy to remove the  transformers without breaking a pin off.
What I plan on doing now is snipping the circuit board away so I have only a little bit of board around the base of the transformer.
Then I just solder new wires to the existing connections.



I guess I will have to try a candy cane  coil with the primaries in parallel..... all mine have been in series so far.

I  do not  agree that the secondarys need to be connected in series.......although it is true there are some problems with balancing things if  you try to run them seperately.
MOST of of the power will go to the lowest impedance secondary unless you ballance things very carefully..... but you can get some useful things done with this balancing .......for example  if you use a coil with 2 windings on it for balancing  .... A switch on  a coil connected  to a bridge then used for feedback will greatly increase the inductance of the other coil on the same core.......giving you a way to switch high voltage with a small low voltage switch.

If course the whole circuit will still be live.........so don't touch it or you may become the new low impedance path for the current.


gary