Joule Thief

[jeanna]

Thanks Hazens. That is a great diagram.
I understood that you could light the light with or without the bridge and without any caps in that light part of the ckt.

Would you please verify this (no caps)?

thanks,

jeanna

[hazens1]

Thanks Hazens. That is a great diagram.
I understood that you could light the light with or without the bridge and without any caps in that light part of the ckt.

Would you please verify this (no caps)?

thanks,

jeanna

Yes, I could light the Floro with no diodes and no caps on the pickup coil. Sometimes I have to touch or ground one of the leads of the pickup coil to get the Floro to trigger. Most of the time it lights after a few seconds. With no caps on the pickup coil it is safe to touch one lead, but use caution when using this technique to trigger the Floro and never touch the pickup with a cap on it!

[jeanna]

Yes, I could light the Floro with no diodes and no caps on the pickup coil. Sometimes I have to touch or ground one of the leads of the pickup coil to get the Floro to trigger. Most of the time it lights after a few seconds. With no caps on the pickup coil it is safe to touch one lead, but use caution when using this technique to trigger the Floro and never touch the pickup with a cap on it!

... but you always use the bridge?

I just don't get this kind of power, but I don't ever use the bridge for lighting the fluoro.

jeanna

[xee2]

@ jeanna

I have a technical question now,
What is the easiest/best way to solder up the 3055 to make this a joulethief for HV?

Just wrap a wire around leads and solder, but try not to use any more heat than needed. The collector is a bit harder. I would suggest using a screw and nut and wrapping wire around screw. Personally I just use clip leads because that makes it easy to try different transistors.

[Artic_Knight]

ArticKnight and Jeanna:

I just got my electronics goldmine "Specials" pages in the mail today and i see they have trigger coils at a very low price. (300+ volts)  Since I am a long time fan of the Fuji circuit I was wondering if, as Fuji did, we could use the trigger coil after our JT base coil, which would replace the transformer in that circuit.  My goal also, now, is to light some tubes from my earth battery and all I need are volts to do so.  I may get some of these (less than $1 ea.) and give it a go.  My uneducated guess is that, depending what is fed into them will reflect in the out put.  What do you guys (no offense Jeanna) think?

Bill

sorry been a little busy, bill i would say as jenna did give it a go. let me give a quick run down tho from what i have learned to try to help you in this matter.

first of all start with a small tube, secondly dont limit yourself to using the electrical contacts as high frequency voltage travels on the outside of things and can light a florecent from being in contact with the glass itself! 

as far as the electronics is concerned i would try having a cap as the "battery" in a typical joule thief setup but the positive end of the cap be on the positive ground and the negative end of the cap on the negative ground, the cap in parallel will hopefully build enough charge to run the jt, you should make use of a diode in this config to keep the current in the cap. or use a npn transistor on the cap with the base and collector on the positive end of the cap and the emitter running to a additional cap to collect a charge. this will allow the "earth battery" to discharge when charged into a cap and keep the electricity there. reference my picture to see the transistor in action.

once you get a JT running from this you will want it to go through a step up transformer, have a 3rd coil in the JT and have that power the primary on a step up transformer and the output if enough juice is available will be the highest voltage it can be.

keep in mind to raise the voltage you have to lower the amperage and if theres no amps left you cant get any more volts so it does have a "peak"