Joule Thief

[electricme]

@all,
Just a snipert of info here, can you tell if electricity is different.

When I was a kid, in Lae in New Guinea, (early 50s) we had a kerosene light, and fridge, then the electric power was connected, but at 8pm the generators were turned off, the lights would blip once, then we knew we had 5 minutes left before the power was off to the whole town..

I could tell (don't know how) that the power there was smooth.
I moved to Australia, and I could tell the power here was harsh.

Both these countries used 240v AC at 50cycles (I dislike the word Hz to discribe cycles)

I could sence it or feel it, no, I didn't have to touch it to find out.
Afta a while I couldn't tell the defference

jim

[Koen1]

@Jim:

can you describe what you mean when you say you "felt"
a difference between the "smooth" and the "harsh" AC?
(trying to understand what this difference may be)

Do you think that has to do with a smoother sinewave output?

And on a sidenote, does Australia have 240V AC?
Or is that like we have here in the Netherlands, 220-240V,
averaging out at 230? Just nitpicking here

I have heard people who use inverters to produce AC talk
about how smoother sinewave output is "better" and less
"stressful" on the equipment/appliances than less smooth
AC that doesn't so much come in neat sinewave as it does
in alternating pulses (block wave)...
Do you think that's what causes the difference in "smooth"
and "harsh" AC? If so, would that imply that inverters are
used in Australia to produce the grid AC?

And just a thought, may be silly, I leave that to you
Let's assume we'd have a "harsh" non-sinewave AC,
could we not "smooth" that out by using some caps
to take the sharp edge off the pulses? Just throwing an idea up here...

Regards,
Koen

[electricme]

@altrez,
Welcome to the JT forum.

Its heartening to know you have already made a JTand it works, congrats from me and all.

I wont aswer your queri about the fuji, as there are others here who are the specialists.

But it's good to know you havejoined us.

jim


@ScienceMan
Welcome also to the JT forum,

You want to get your school kids to make a JT, this will surprise them, (and you) ha ha.
I think this is an excellent idea.

If you ask ist here, or Gadgetmall, he will probably have some JT kits that he could sell to you if you or the kids havent got access to the torids etc etc.

Just make sure you have one working before you dive into the room, anyway we can help you with the how and what to do.



Bacilly your JT needs 1 transistor, (BC548, or 2n2222 or 2n3904) as long as it is a npn device.
Use a core torid anywhere from 1/4" to a 1" diameter, yellow or black core, either will work.
Torids are attracted to a magnet, but have no resistance.

Some  copper wire, try any size, wind anywhere from 2 bifilar turns to 12 around the torid.
If you need heeps of fine copper wire, see if you can locate a fan out of a dead microwave, and unwind the wire off the coil. or use jiffey hookup wire.

You will need a least 2  LEDs, 1 goes between the collector and the emitter of the transistor
Keep the 2nd LED to see if your torid can put out usable energy.

If the school has a cro, hook it up to different points and look at the waveforms.

Wind a secondary coil on the same torid, but dont go over the bifilar windings, for example, start the secondary, wind wind, then stop before you get to the other end of the bifilar coil, and this is the secondary ending.

Solder the led to the secondary ends, turn on the juce.
Next unsolder the LED, turn it around and resolder it again, and see what occurs.

Next, unsolder one LED leg, and solder a 1N4004 diode in between.

Try soldering LEDs in series, then try LEDs in parallel

Hope these ideas are of help to you.
Let us know how you go.

Almost 4 got, if you want to wind a big secondary coil, cut some cardboard that will fit through the torid, say 1/4" wide, 3" long, cut a NOTCH V in each end, wind as much wire onto this, then feed it like a weavers shuttle through the torid.
Saves you going troppo.

jim

@Koen1
Sorry to keep you, and don't know if anyone has helped you.

OK, I didn't understand you had a working JT, I thought you had problems in hooking it up, sorry old chap.

Right, so it's your secondary you are having problems with.....?

In case this is it, try this

Wind 80 turns on the torid which has the JT bifilar coil on it.
Don't wind over the top of the Bifilar turns because it will interfeer with its operation.
If you need to, you can wind turns back over the ones you wound, this will be you secondary second layer.
I read somewhere that the magnetic flux works well up to 2 layers, even to 3 layers, but it diminishes after that.

In my above post to Scienceman, I mentioned some things about his secondarie coils, that could help you also.

If you get an output from the secondary, then grab another torid and wind 20 turns onto it.
Then wind a secondary onto it also, then see what the voltages are.

@altrez and Science man, the outputs from these JT will contain NO amps, only ma, but they can light up fluros and neons.
But, most of us here have found that we are getting DC and AC together, and it appears that rotating magnetic fields are involved inside the torids.

jim
   

[innovation_station]

im happy for everyones achievements



are we ready for GRUNT YET?!?!?!

eventually i will try to use some heavy duty transistors  from a comp power supply 

someing like 30 amp @1.5v would be CRAZY

so i see NO REASON TO TUNE THE DAMM THING TO 5MA...... THIS IS A WASTE OF A COIL ALSO YOUR COIL WILL HAVE TO RUN IN RESONANCE ....  LOL   CHANGE THE LOAD.....  SO DOES THE FREQ CHANGE LOL

LMAO!!

THE WAY I HAVE TUNED MY MK2 COILS..... THEY ARE NOT FREQ DEPENDENT    meaning ....  lol   out put remains the same in working range.....

IST!!

NOW DO ASK ME HOW I AMP THE OUT OF MY COIL BY 1000  10 000 100 000 TIMES?!?!?!?!

[Koen1]

@Koen1
Sorry to keep you, and don't know if anyone has helped you.

Well yes and no, people clearly offering helpfully intended advice,
and I'm certainly gratefull for that, but I'm still not seeing anything
spectacular in my output...

OK, I didn't understand you had a working JT, I thought you had problems in hooking it up, sorry old chap.

Lol no that wasn't it The JT works like a charm. Great way to use "dead" batteries in flashlights etc.

Right, so it's your secondary you are having problems with.....?

Again, yes and no. I can get output from a secondary or two even, but it is nowhere near the
high output some have reported. And I'm not just talking about the volts here,
if it was only volts that'd be fine, but some have reported getting high voltage DC out,
now that's something I'm not seeing at all. For that would seem to imply actual
power gain as in not only is the output higher voltage but it has actual amperage too...
What I see is very straightforward transformation of low volts high amps to high volts
low amps, but not at all high volts at near input amps.
But hey, perhaps I should just forget about the reported high voltage DC output eh?
That seems to be the part that I'm just not seeing here and also what frustrated me,
but if I just forget about that then I've got a nice working JT so I could just leave it at that.

In case this is it, try this

Wind 80 turns on the torid which has the JT bifilar coil on it.
Don't wind over the top of the Bifilar turns because it will interfeer with its operation.
If you need to, you can wind turns back over the ones you wound, this will be you secondary second layer.
I read somewhere that the magnetic flux works well up to 2 layers, even to 3 layers, but it diminishes after that.

Yeah, I was thinking, could we not wrap a layer of simple iron garden wire around it like a sort of
additional core layer and could this perhaps enable us to wrap another coil layer around it? Just a wild thought.

In my above post to Scienceman, I mentioned some things about his secondarie coils, that could help you also.

If you get an output from the secondary, then grab another torid and wind 20 turns onto it.
Then wind a secondary onto it also, then see what the voltages are.

Ok, thanks for the tip!
Erm...
Are you saying to take the output from the pickup coil and feed that straight into
a primary coil that is wound on a different and seperate ring core? Did I understand
that correctly?

Now I'm probably saying something stupid here, but would that not simply act as
a transformer that is fed the output from the JT pickup?
So then let's say the JT pickup puts out 5V pulses, we feed this into a trafo
with a 20 turn primary and let's say a 40 turn secondary, then the secondary
will simply put out 10V pulses, right?
So then why not just wind a pickup coil on the JT with a lot more turns?
Or does the flux action in the JT core interfere with the simple trafo action perhaps?

Anyways, I shall wind a seperate trafo on a core and feed it the pickup output,
see what I get.
Thanks for the tips.

@Mark: just to get back to your Tesla toroid imitaion experiments with the JT,
did you get any significantly higher output when you used 2 sets of JT input
coils at 90 degrees to eachother, like that Telsa toroid patent showed?
If so, then perhaps I should try that?
Did you try the setup with one normally wound pickup coil and one of which
half is wound oppositely to its other half, like shown in that patent pic?
Or did you use two pickups that are wound normally?
lol still trying to figure out how to get more power out

Kind regards,
Koen