Claimed OU circuit of Rosemary Ainslie

[Harvey]

Any time Mile High,

This is one of the reasons the HEXFET is superior to the everyday MOSFET, because it does handle repetitive avalanche; up to 19mJ if the junction temperature is minded in the IRFPG50. However, the reverse recovery action (negative spike on the drain) is as much as 950ns long to reset after the reverse current has run its course. This isn't too important in the single device application like the RA circuit. But in a motor drive using a push pull dual device where it is tempting to use the diode in a free wheeling mode, it can cause problems because of the timing where unwanted current flows between the two devices when they are each tied to opposite rails.

Other than this, everything else in your post seemed spot on 

[powercat]

New vid from hhoforvolts
HHO meets Rosemary Ainslie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xyw_qCOUqc

cat

[Hoppy]

Attached are some Excel charts taken from Aaron's Ainslie circuit power measurements. Can anyone see more back to the battery in these?

Hoppy

[MileHigh]

Aaron:

It's nice to see that you decided to make use of the DSO.  Me thinks I see a lot of points that you are making that are uncredited to me.  It doesn't really matter because I am just stating the obvious.  Still, it wouldn't hurt to try puttting some hair on your chest.  Then you and Rosemary pull up the wagons and attack .99 for asking some astute questions very delicately, what's up with that?  Both of you need to take a chill pill and engage.

I there is a definite pattern here:  Do your experiment and then analyze it from your perspective.  A lot of your comments may be correct but some my be wrong.  Then you will defend your incorrect points aggressively, sometimes digging yourself into a hole.  When you finally concede that point "x" is wrong after the contrary is proved to you conclusively, you barely acknowledge it and then it is never mentioned again.  Then you issue new "directives" that are just the current flavour of the week based on what you saw in your latest experiment, with a chance that they will be totally forgotten if you discover something contradictory the following week.  You are still making progress and I credit you for that.

You mentioned that this has been a great learning exercise for you and that's great.  However, if you didn't fight tooth and nail over the past few months you would have learnt 10 times as much as you have learned by now.  Nonetheless, I know that you are silently taking notes in the background.

Anyway, that's the drama that forms the backdrop to this whole set of threads, now let's move on to the meat and potatoes.

The first and most important point that was not mentioned is that your hunt for the "maximum COP when running at 'resonance'" or more appropriately stated as "some kind of intentionally induced spurious oscillation mode" turned up goose eggs.  You went in all excited with the DSO ready to record waveforms showing huge COPs and found nothing special.

Sorry to state it up front but I can't seem to "forget" that that's what you and Rosemary have been saying all along, that you are going to get the maximum possible COP with resonance/oscillation in the circuit and that didn't happen.  Somewhere down the line I probably stated several times that there was no logical reason for this to happen.  How about dem apples?

MileHigh

[MileHigh]

Some comments on your report:

Thanks for putting real effort in documenting what you did, it was obviously a lot of work.

You didn't make precise measurements of your shunt resistors.  For the current/energy in vs. current/energy out that is not too critical because you can look at the relative values.  However, it is critical if you wanted to add the load current to the 555 timer current to see the true net current in and out of the battery.  Besides that, it is good practice and you should measure your shunt resistors in the future, not to mention that you are doing power calculations based on the instantaneous voltage values and the current values which are derived from the shunt resistor.

1K potentiometer between NE555N positive input and positive terminal on load power supply.

That's just plain wrong and I think that I know why you did this.  It's your solution for preventing 555 timers from being blown in past experiments.  I know that there is a "culture" of blowing chips and transistors among the experimenters and they come up with workarounds instrad of figuring out why the part blew in the first place.  I will guess that the real reason the 555s blow is that the loads experimenters put on the output pin are completely wrong sometimes and source or sink way too much current.

So you are taking that legacy strategy along for the ride here when there is no need to do this.  The MOSFET input is essentially an open circuit and the only issue is charging and discharging the capacitance associated with the semiconductor gate layer.  The MOSFET is barely putting any load on the 555 output and the load is zero once the output voltage has stabilized.

There is no reason whatsoever for adding a resistor in series with the Vcc power input pin on the 555 chip.  This is never done in real life because it makes absolutely no sense.  The voltage drop across your current limiting trimpot is making the 555's Vcc take a wild ride when this is never supposed to happen in real life.  The comparators in the 555 are given a bumpy ride.

I can't remember if the trimpot in series with the 555 power pin is critical for searching for your preferred oscillation mode.  However, it sure is screwing up your "on time" and "off time" timing resistors/trimpot setups.

On pot resistance: 32.8 ohms
• Off pot resistance: 293.9 ohms
• NE555N power adjustment pot resistance: 193.1 ohms

Yikes!  Look at that.  The "on pot" resistance is something akin to 193 + 32 ohms.  The "off pot" resistance is something akin to 193 + 239 ohms.

Also, the 193 ohm "power adjustment pot" resistance is sucking the life out of your 555's output stage.  It can't possibly source or sink the current as per its specifications because of that trimpot.  This is sucking the life out of the rise time for your 555 when it wants to drive the gate capacitance high.  It's also making the output voltage of the 555 unstable, tracking the voltage drop across the potentiometer setting.

Again, I don't know if you need it for an oscillation mode or what, but you simply NEVER do this in real life.  You do not choke off the power supply for a chip, it is simply not done.

MileHigh