Joule Thief

[electricme]

@Bill,
Thanks for those kind remarks about my "new" second hand solar pannel.
One month ago I saw a "snapper" rideon mower at the dump, it was ancient, but I had to leave it there, but I took the spark ign coil, he he.

The rest of it ended up being bulldozed and burnt.

I am lookoing forward to seeing what results you get from this 5Lb magnesium block, I think ship writes use these things on ships hulls, or is that zinc blocks? mabe someone here could let me know for shore.

@Jeanna,
Go crazy, thats the way lol, go for broke and try to squeeze out as many volts as you can.

@all,
I'm going to start to wind some turns on  my huge steel ring I found last month, go to clear some space first, this needs a whole table top to it's self.
So the lounge room becomes the workshop for a little while, oooooh the joys of investigations of the JT. ha ha.

jim

[WilbyInebriated]

@ stprue
if you change your base resistor, you can change which led(s) polarity lights up brighter or make them both light the same. i mentioned this back at the start of the thread but no one has really played with it yet. tuning the base R to get the led(s) to light to even brightness regardless of polarity will give the 'closest to sine' you can easily get without using a scope.

@ bill and jeanna
thank you both! you were both right. i just needed to go do some fishing and disc golfing and think about it. stephan can censor whatever he likes, seems he's starting to make a habit of it... ie: fuzzytomcat's post.

@ cap-z-ro
thanks for your support!

[Mk1]

@jeanna

Nice work !

My only concern is that you did the test with a fixed base resistor value , you would have benefited even more by finding the sweet spot on the resistor every time you change the turn count, yes there is the freq factor , but its not all .
This is why i always use a trim-pot.

Mark

 

[jeanna]

All new parts yes..
3904, 3/4" torrid, 30 mag wire for secondary, 22 awg white for the primary.. 68 ohm resistor.. 3 x 5mm white LED's
I made the torrid using gadagets method of a single wire , wrap 6 times, leave a inch excess, then wrap the last 6 times.With the inch excess being where you hoop the battery positive.

What could be wrong? And why do you think there is something wrong? Just how fast it is dieing?

....
....

from 2.2k down to 47 Ohm.
The JT would not work from 2.2 K - 100 ohm.. but would work with 68 ohm and under. sadly i dont have any resistors between 100 - 68..
But still is wierd why it would only work with such a small resistor..

The reason I say there is a bad hook up is because there should not be any place where it stops working completely.
Not in the middle between working resistance and working resistance.
This is the base resistance you are talking about, right?
It is the only place where I have a resistor.

There have been too many times where while moving a resistor (or wire) in or out of the breadboard I dislodge something.
Then it doesn't work, but at another time, it works just fine.
It was just a connection.

Breadboards are easy but when you get flaky results always suspect the breadboard first.

So,

Please retry all the places where the base resistor made a no result.
This is not the opposite of a sweet spot. This means a connection problem to me.

That said, since you gave the details, you are at the hairy limit of the voltage that will run this from the secondary.

And, did I hear you say this is off the primary bifilar? You still aren't getting the secondary to work??

These 2 things are the reason I want to give you some attention tonight.
I think you should have this working from the secondary.
And there is a straighter line relationship between the components and the results.

jeanna

[jeanna]

@jeanna

Nice work !

My only concern is that you did the test with a fixed base resistor value , you would have benefited even more by finding the sweet spot on the resistor every time you change the turn count, yes there is the freq factor , but its not all .
This is why i always use a trim-pot.
Mark

I might have found a higher amount by doing that, but I would have missed the principle that I was checking.

I had a trimpot and I checked it at the beginning and it was my purpose NOT to make any change in anything except the number of turns,
This way, we know that the change in frequency and volts I saw  came only from the number of turns.

(and maybe a little problem seeing the screen and maybe a little from the batteries starting to go flat.) but I think this relationship is pretty clear, now.

Now, we can all find the sweet spot for the toroids we have and push the limits on the volts then after they are way high, push the limits on the frequency.

Without nailing this down it would forever be a guess.

Thank you.
I am pretty happy it is all working out so clearly.

That lecture from our man Tesla has made a big difference for me.

thank you again and again,

jeanna