what about the wimhurst generator?

[nitinnun]

there were pictures of it in the book.
i have also seen pictures of this swedish wimhurst machine, online.

if it is not a wimhurst machine, than it looks exactly like one......

[TinselKoala]

Yes, the basic structure of the Testatika does "look like" a Wimshurst machine. But this may be a red herring. Certainly the Testatika device is not optimized for the electrostatic generation of high voltages or currents.
I'm not saying it isn't, for sure, but what I am saying is that the machine violates many principles of good high-voltage design (and I'm not talking a few kilovolts here; my machine in the picture is producing at least 200,000 volts and on a good day may reach 500,000 volts).
Certainly the many Wimshurst machine designs that are made with sectors on the disks, contact brushes, and many projecting parts and low-dielectric materials, can produce nothing like these voltages or currents. The Wimshurst in the video makes a 75 mm spark every 3 or 4 seconds, and that's pretty typical for a tabletop Wimshurst with 10-inch disks. My machine makes a 200 mm spark nearly once per second--and it has NO contact brushes, only corona brushes.
The electrostatic machine at the heart of the Testatika, if it is such, would only be capable of a small output, because its voltage would be severely limited by all the sharp edges, points, sectors, and contact brushes. Plus, Baumann's own description of the workings of the machine indicate that, even if it is a static machine, it must work on completely different principles than the Wimshurst or Bonetti machines. Baumann says one disk is Cloud and one is Earth, for example, which implies that the disks have opposite polarities. This is not the case for Wimshurst or Bonetti machines. And so forth.

[nitinnun]

i think that it would be wise to withhold your judgement,
until you have looked closer at the machine in kelly's book.


instead of building large whimhurst generators, why not build many small ones?
each one powering an individual electronic device.
such as a computer?

the DC output could be converted into AC,
converted into more amperage and less voltage by a transformer,
and fed into the computer.

[nitinnun]

if you needed more amperage,
you could even connect many small wimhursts together, in parallel.

stacking their amperage.


i have been thinking about how to build a flat, wide, ring shaped DC motor.
the flatter i could build it, the more small wimhursts could be stacked.

to combine their amperage.

[hansvonlieven]

G'day all,

Forget about Wimshurst machines, ther are far better machines that have been developed.

The best available literature is V E Johnson's Modern high speed influence machines that was published in the 1020's if my memory does not desert me. The book has recently been re-published and is available on the net.

A must read for anyone interested in such things.

Hans von Lieven