Joule Thief

[jeanna]

@Bill,
I just talked to my computer repair people and they haven't started it yet!. now they promise it will go out the door tomorrow and be here on friday.

I love those results you are getting with your caps.

I think according to cap literature the charge and discharge are the same, as you say. but it seems not. Were you charging it for 23 minutes too? I guess you can take a lot of trash out with that as a timed light! 

@All,
I made a joule thief in the original toroid way to test against mk1's style.

I used 11 bifilar turns as usual.

Then using some red mag wire I made 52 turns.

So, this is as big as the one made in mk1's style, and has 52  turns secondary which is the same number as his, but the mag wire is 30 gauge. (like my first one on the 10 hour test.)

I checked this with the bridge and the volts reading one way was 26V the other way was 32V.

The lights are very bright. blazing category.

I had cut the mag wire longer than I needed, so I wound one turn at a time and measured the volts across the bridge. I was noticing that the volts one way was going up and the other way was going down.


I eventually got them even at 63 and 64 turns. and one is 37.5V and the other 34.8V

@AbbaRue.

I measured according to your suggestion from neg of the first to pos of each following light.

Strange. The voltage across the lights went up to about 11.8V on the 8th light, then stayed the same then decreased to 8.4 by the time I got to the end, which is the 10th.

===

Now, I am going to remove the red mag wire and use 52 turns of the 19 gauge. This way the test will be a real comparison of the 2 styles of making the thief.

This will be the same construction as the little one, and it will be on the bigger toroid matching the material, and use the exact same gauge and number of turns secondary as the mk1.

I'll let you know...

jeanna

EDIT: I re-counted the red and made changes. They are now correct.

[sparks]

I've been following this thread from the beginning, but busy with work. Just a quick tip on sourcing - I managed to snag a few power supplies thrown out by the IT department where I work. Tore one open a couple of days ago and was able to salvage 6 toroids of different sizes and some nice fat diodes.  The folks at Wal Mart photo centre gave me a few disposable camera carcasses as well.

I'll try and put this thing together this week. Tho' my real interest is in lighting incandescent bulbs with cold electricity, rather than fluorescent ones.  My preference is a transistor (versus 555 timer) to get the right frequency to make this happen (I've tried both, and have gotten better results from the transistor).  Has anyone given any thought to moving past LEDs and CFLs to incandescent bulbs? The nice thing about a 555 is that the frequency can be changed with a pot, whereas with a toroid, it's pretty much set. Unless of course a pot can be integrated into the circuit to make this possible.

I was able to get some frequency optimization using a pot in Groundloop's 12V battery charger circuit - see:  http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=4057.msg75477#msg75477
I'm not trying to derail the thread here. I'm just wondering if somehow something can be integrated into one of these jule thief circuits to change the frequency to bring some resonance (and cold elctricity/radiant energy) to a bulb.
Any thoughts greatly appreciated,
B

       Incandescent bulbs have to heat the filament to emit infrared wave energy.   The argon gas in the bulbs absorbs a little of the ir and retransmits it at visible light spectrums.  Heating resistive materials to get emwave energy is not a very efficient process.   You need the infrared waves build an infrared transmitter.  The argon will light up cold. Bill can get more light conversion if he grabs on to the tube.
The mercury vapor inside the tube likes infrared frequencies also.  There is a shitload of infrared wave energy around even when it's cold out.  Just a matter of tuning in to different stations as the frequency drifts.

[Pirate88179]

@ Sparks:

I really appreciate the fact that you are posting and reading here.  Your posts really make me think, and, to be honest, I have to read some of them several times, and then do a little research on the net to almost understand what you are saying.  This is in NO way your fault, it is mine.  Many of the other folks that are on here it is the same.  They MAKE me THINK!  I thank you and I thank all of them for this.

@ All:

I love learning and reading and doing and trying stuff but like a lot of folks, I can be intellectually lazy at times.  Well, being intellectually lazy does not cut it here on this topic I can tell you.  If my mind is sidetracked by other stuff for a bit, just a very short little bit, I come back here and there are like 3 pages of great posts and experiments and results for me to catch up on. I may never catch up actually, but, I will try.

If I say this too often then please someone tell me to shut up and I will but, this is the best group of folks I have ever been associated with on any research project, or any project for that matter.  You all make me try harder just to keep up as you all know I am not a real electronics person.  Once again, my thanks to you all!

Bill

[Mk1]

@jeanna

Remember i get 60 volt per 26 turns coil. So 120 volts for 52 turns.

[Pirate88179]

Mark:

Do you think it would be better to have one large toroid or several small ones linked together using the same transistor like what you are doing?  I didn't know a transistor could share toroids........of course, before this topic, I didn't know a lot of things. Jim is trying to get hold of a large one and if he has any success with it, I may too.   I am glad you are here also.  Thanks for all of your work and contributions.

Bill