Joule Thief

[jeanna]

Hi everybody,

I took the little MK1-jeanna hybrid another step today and I think it is a really good idea.

In my first one, I limited the number of turns to match a 'known' turns ratio from many other coils. I had found a comfortable turns wind to make a little light, and so made many and knew what to expect.

The widow (black and red original = black widow) has
5T on the base coil and
8T on the collector coil.
This seems to give the best tuning outside of 11T,11T, which is also stable and very good.

So, I wound 5T and 8T and added to the basic 3 directions of turns for the attempted 3 phase winding on this secondary.

This time I wound 12T for the first direction and 24T for the second and 36-48 (I lost count, but it is likely over 40) for the third giving a grand total of 72-84 turns for this special secondary.
So, guessing that the total is 76, I will call this

5T,8T,76T
2N3904 transistor
48ohm base resistance

172volts!!!!!!!
and
it lights a neon to prove it!
68.9khz too

There is enough room in the center for probably 40 more turns at least.

In general at least, this means that it is probably possible to light a larger fluoro tube with the .86" one that only lit a 4 inch one. (I ran out of room in the center on that one too.)

Or in other words... more for less.

I used 28 gauge wire left over from a bedini order. I like that too. It is thinner than the 27gauge even, but not at all flimsy like the radio shack 30 gauge wire.

I will try to load up a pic later so please check back.

jeanna

[Pirate88179]

Jeanna:

Way to go!!  Hey, I just watched Lidmotor's replication of your big joule thief circuit on Youtube.  He was really impressed with it and so was I.  Very well done.  The cfl he was lighting from an AA bat. was extremely bright.

This is wonderful work Jeanna, I hope you are proud.

Bill

[Pirate88179]

@ All:

I bought a cheap LED flashlight the other day that had 5 super bright LEDs and ran on 3 AAA batteries.  Well, I could not help myself and gutted it and added a basic Joule Thief circuit running on one AA battery.  Here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW3ZGjrL0Os

It is nothing really special but it works great.  This is like the 3rd one I have done.  these are handy as they run on "dead" batteries that I get for free from my friends.

2N3904 transistor and 1k resistor, 22 gauge wire and a 1" ferrite torrid.  I did not count the windings but, it is as much as you can get with this size wire when winding bifilar on this size toroid.  Nothing fancy here but it gives good light and will run a looooong time.  Way longer than if I used the 3 AAA batteries it came with.  The light level is about the same if not brighter than original.

One tip I will pass on is to use a hot glue gun to insulate all of the solder joints and to hold all of the wires in place.

Bill

[IotaYodi]

Nice work. Ive tried to make the simplest joule thief for kicks with 3 different toroids I had laying around. Works with 3 volts but not 1.5. 

[Mk1]

@all

Homage to Jeanna by lidmotor ...

http://www.youtube.com/user/Lidmotor#p/a/u/0/KAakZTR_4LE