Joule Thief

[Pirate88179]

Thought I would repost these to show that the 3904 is just fine for these circuits.  Of course, there are many other transistors that will work as well.

@ Jeanna:

You mentioned yesterday during testing that you hooked your Fuji board to your toroid Joule thief....I'll bet you fried the transistor then, or at least, damaged it with the high voltage.  Just a thought.

Bill

[sparks]

   The action of a flurescent bulb is you heatup the filament and it ouputs infrared waves.   Like an incandescent does.  The difference is that inside this vacuum tube you have mercury vapor.  In an incandescent you got argon which absorbs the ir and converts it into visible freqs.  The mercury vapor absorbs the ir and forms a plasma.  The plasma is a real good conductor so they have to ballast the line so you don't have a short circuit of electron current from electrode to electrode.  Now the plasma doesnt have to have current going through it to be sustained just emwave energy.  When the torroidal transformer is used for a choke we convert pulsed energy into heating the core.  Again most of this heat is in the ir wavelength.  It's all around us we just need to build some decent receivers.

[Goat]

@ All

Do not stare at high brightness LEDs, because doing so may cause permanent damage to your eyes.

From http://cappels.org/dproj/LED%20Warning/Danger_of_Eye_Danger.html

Other than that, love this thread, keep picking at it 

Regards,
Paul

[jeanna]

@Bill,
My torroid has as many turns as yours. which is 1/2 of Timmy's

Maybe it is the core that is making the difference, .I csnnot even light a red led with a 3904. Jesus says he thinks it is resonance. I don't know, maybe. My torroid core is not one inch, though. It is maybe 1/2 inch with the same number of turns.

About the frying pan issue... I did the test that xee told me to do to see if the cell is working, only instead of using the dmm on 1000V level, I hit those places with the little joule thief. Pop Ouch.

@xee
I plan to make a copy of your circuit before Bills because there is less soldering. I want to recap the steps. I doubt if anyone will mind if I bring this forward 10 pages. so:

1. REMOVED LARGE CAPACITOR. Short with screw driver first. This can be left on board but is large enough to cause serious damage and should be removed just to be safe.
2. Cut lead at anode end of diode and fastened one end of tube to lead at cathode end of diode (end with the line on it). Make sure there is a good size gap where you cut the lead.
3. Connected other end of tube to battery negative clip.
4. Shorted little lines on one side of hole to the lines on the other side of hole (on trace side of board where shown in my previous photo).

Step 4 is because you did not use a switch over those traces.

I'll check in later. Maybe I will have results.

Xee how many hours on one AAA battery?
Bill, is your battery still the first one? Maybe it is running down?

jeanna

[jeanna]

@ Jeanna:

You mentioned yesterday during testing that you hooked your Fuji board to your toroid Joule thief....I'll bet you fried the transistor then, or at least, damaged it with the high voltage.  Just a thought.

Bill

Actually, I think Abba Rue was right. I cooked it doing nothing unusual, but there was a little shock when I was fiddling with it to keep it on steadily. I touched the xenon and there was a little spark and the light went off and has not gone back on. I bet I fried the transistor. It is likely to be the most sensitive thing and without it there is no oscillation, so, ... I don't know. I did get 2 good 2 hour sessions out of it. On to the next one!

thanks

jeanna