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Electrostatic motor


LidMotor does the coolest stuff :)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQh-Y0PEzaE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQh-Y0PEzaE)

That's really neat all right!

I especially like the use of the dollar store materials. Even neater would be to get rid of the commercial capacitor and run it on a simple Leyden jar made from a plastic bottle and some foil. The magnetic bearing is a nice touch. I've used needles and small glass test tubes in much the same way.

Even neater than that would be to get rid of the power supply and charge the Leyden jar with an electrostatic generator of some kind, like a small VanDeGraaff machine, also made from dollar store bits and pieces like steel bowls, rubber bands and so on.

The fact that you don't need wires, magnets or precise machining means that devices like these _could_ have been made and used a long long time ago, even perhaps "prehistorically". There are people who think that the Ark of the Covenant could have been an electrostatic capacitor, and the pillars of the Temple of Solomon, electrostatic generators.

There are some easy enhancements that could make LidMotor's esmotor run even better.

The Moore's Dirod powering an enhanced Franklin motor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqf3bUL4YqE

A little VanDeGraaf machine powering another kind of "cyclotron" free-ball motor, showing some interesting effects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-aP7sk48jw

The ping-pong balls are coated with a conductive paint containing nickel, that can be found in electronic supply stores. The VanDeGraaff machine uses a little motor from a tape deck, running on a 12 volt battery, and an ordinary rubber band as a belt, with rollers made of teflon or Delrin at one end, and brass or aluminum at the other. Steel bowls are from the Chinese restaurant supply store. I found that the bead chain makes excellent "wiring" because it is large-diameter so doesn't blow off charge like a thin wire would, yet it is conductive and flexible enough for the very high voltages you get. What's a few ohms when you have 50 kV to play with...

;)

If anyone still has CRT monitors, you can get enough power to run motors like LidMotor's by using some foil tape to attach a conductor to the screen. Oleg Jefimenko shows how to make electret "slot" motors that can be powered from an antenna lofted by a balloon.

Electrostatics are great fun... and yes, you can get zapped from the storage devices like capacitors. Commercial caps can store a heavy charge for a long time, too....

Quote from: TinselKoala on November 18, 2013, 07:45:20 AM
(All of it )

Yes, he started with a soft ball of sorts and a franklin bell a few videos ago.


And a bug zapper tesla coil...


I actually have a van de graff now; it's a hand crank... but, was able to put it across a spark gap with a secondary coil .. and have a bad tesla coil :)  Interestingly while it wasn't sparking but was charging the neon would continue to spark... so there was a lot of leakage.  Really need different stuff than stranded wire to use static electricty well.... like if I attach a meter probe with a pointy end on the ground and charge the ball at all, it glows no the top from 4 feet away :)



Then I read more about tesla's obsession with short sparks; so there is a flowing fluid dense/viscous? dielectric (oil) so it cuts the spark extra short....


TO the point that any back EMF from the field collapsing from the coil can't return...

Quote from: TinselKoala on November 18, 2013, 07:45:20 AM
That's really neat all right!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrl4_wREFJ8 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrl4_wREFJ8)


I like yours too :)

Here's a cool one from the Energetic Forum thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozqtARt7n0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozqtARt7n0)


Also, check this site map out for the latest in the highest state of the art: 


http://capindreswebsite.com/electrostatic-motor-menu.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir9RIsXzmzY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ir9RIsXzmzY)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogpGHFgV6E (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eogpGHFgV6E)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVfw-TeJ9r4 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVfw-TeJ9r4)



:) :) :) :)

Check this one out courtesy of SilverToGold from Energetic Forum:



http://www.shinsei-motor.com/English/techno/ (http://www.shinsei-motor.com/English/techno/)

Hmm.... that's interesting, but I wonder if there is a translation problem. The vacuum running... it is a real problem to sustain high voltages in any but the very hardest vacuums. Even the "vacuum" of Earth's orbit is conductive enough to make it really difficult to get voltages over 1 kV.

For example in my "terrela" anatmosphere vacuum chamber, using the 2-stage vane pump which pulls down to 25-30 microns or so, the maximum voltage can only rise to 900 volts or so before the highly conductive plasma forms.

With very close electrode spacing the standoff voltage will be even less. Of course if they are using turbopumps for roughing and an ion or oil-diffusion pump for final vacuum they can get below the "glow discharge" region and begin to build up higher voltages, but then, shouldn't you have to include the vacuum system power as part of the motor's input power?

I haven't yet tried my Mendocino maglev esmotor in the chamber; maybe I'll dust it all off, get it down from the shelf and try it out. Things like VDG generators, corona motors, and so on usually don't work in ordinary lab vacuums. I have tested a simple corona motor in my chamber and it doesn't work, although it does make nice "st.elmo's fire" anode tufts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niFRhRgY_9M

ゴシック]The clear case around ESM65-TR1 keeps the vacuum environment around ESM65-TR1. Keeping the vacuum environment around ESM65-TR1 reduces the possibility of "spark generating".
The sound is the wind noise of the propeller attached to the tip of equipment and the sound of a vacuum pump.

Look at the "Spark generating" in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFDVa9sze0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFDVa9sze0)

Quote from: synchro1 on November 20, 2013, 07:00:33 PM
ゴシック]The clear case around ESM65-TR1 keeps the vacuum environment around ESM65-TR1. Keeping the vacuum environment around ESM65-TR1 reduces the possibility of "spark generating".
The sound is the wind noise of the propeller attached to the tip of equipment and the sound of a vacuum pump.

Look at the "Spark generating" in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFDVa9sze0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtFDVa9sze0)

Do you not believe me that a very hard vacuum is needed for high voltages in vacuum? Do you not believe my instrumental measurements?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen%27s_law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen%27s_law)

I see the sparks in that last video; they prove that that particular device isn't under vacuum, and it is a Franklin motor like the first one I linked up above which also sparks to transfer charge from the inputs to the balls.

If the ESM65-TR1 is running in vacuum, it is in a vacuum that is below the "Paschen limit", the extreme left end of this set of curves. Otherwise you would see a glow discharge as I demonstrated, and the voltage could not rise to "electrostatic" levels, as I also showed. If that is the case, then the vacuum is produced by a high-vacuum system involving turbo or oil-diffusion pumps, roughed or backed by a vane pump, and perhaps even augmented by a diode-type ion pump once the pressure gets into the real "hard" vacuum range. I am not saying that this is impossible, what I am saying is that if such a vacuum system is in use, it must be considered part of the motor, and the power to run the pumps to establish and maintain the vacuum must be considered as part of the power input to the motor.

@TK check your PM
Kind Regards
Mark

@TK,


Here's a quote from above:

"The vacuum running... it is a real problem to sustain high voltages in any but the very hardest vacuums".


            The voltage to span a gap is inversely proportional to the pressure. It would follow that a minimum voltage would be required in "The hardest of vacuums". The point is there's less need to sustain a high voltage in a hard vacuum. One would require less input to run the electrostaic motor in a hard vacuum. This savings would offset the power to create and maintain the vacuum. Efficiency of greater then 95% must include the cost of the vacuum, but it has to be a function of time.


             The pertinent issue is not wether or not high voltage is reachable in a hard vacuum, but is the voltage at the brush points less enough across the drive rotor to the ground under pressure, to compensate for the reduction in gap resistance from the vacuum? Lessened gap resistance may increase the voltage to the ground across the drive rotor even though the voltage at the brush points is less in the vacuum then when under pressure.


            I think it would be a real treat to watch you run your Mendicino esmotor in a vacuum to compare efficiency, and determine exactly what the savings advantage amounts to. Naturally, the integrity of the vacuum seal is a critical factor.

@synchro:
By definition, a "hard vacuum" is pressure to the _left_ of all the curves on the Paschen graph above. The voltage to jump a gap goes way _up_ in that region. The electric field gradient depends on the voltage produced, and the forces available to turn an electrostatic motor depend on the field gradient. No HV == no large field gradient == no force to turn the motor. So for an electrostatic motor to operate, you would need a _hard vacuum_ by this definition, or atmospheric or _greater_ pressure of air or an insulating gas.

I can only get down to about 25-30 microns at best, usually not even that low, with my vacuum system, and that is solidly in the "glow discharge" region for air -- as my vids demonstrate. I've already tested simple corona motors at that pressure and they don't work, there isn't enough ion thrust to turn the rotor. In other labs years ago I tested VDG machines at similar vacuums, which also depend on corona "ion spray" to operate, and couldn't get them to work either. I can't tell from the pictures what the operating principle is for the Japanese motor (Franklin type, corona spray type, or other) but it looks like it could be a Franklin type with spark transfer of charge, like my ball motors in the videos above (enhanced Franklin w/ rotor sparks over a tiny clearance, and the free-ball cyclotron sparks by direct contact with the field plates). If they have a good enough vacuum and the charge transfer is by contact, as in the "free ball cyclotron" video, the Franklin type motor would probably work, but definitely high electric field gradient (meaning definitely high voltage buildup, meaning definitely hard vacuum) is required for that.

I've got another experiment set up on the bench right now that isn't compatible with HV, but shortly I will be testing the Mendocino esmotor in my vac chamber. Since it too depends on ion spray from the negative "points" electrode to transfer charge to the rotor disc, I predict it won't work, for two reasons: not enough ions: to transfer charge, and too many ions: the glow discharge shorting the system to prevent HV buildup in the first place. Lol.... trapped in that darn Paschen "valley" again.

Commercial large "Pelletron" type VDGs used in particle accelerators often work with gases like CO₂ or SF₆ at _increased_ pressure, even as high as 10 atmospheres,  for more insulation. It's a lot easier to maintain increased gas pressure than it is to keep a good hard vacuum.  Does the Japanese machine use a rotary seal, or is it magnetically coupled to the output shaft through the chamber wall? If the former, then I seriously doubt that they could maintain a hard vacuum without constant pumping with turbopump backed with vane pump.

@TK,

Theoretically, a greater percentage of the applied voltage should travel across the drive rotor from the brush points to the ground with a reduction in pressure around the gap, right?

Quote from: synchro1 on November 21, 2013, 04:07:33 PM
@TK,

Theoretically, a greater percentage of the applied voltage should travel across the drive rotor from the brush points to the ground with a reduction in pressure around the gap, right?

Do you perhaps mean "current" travels?
Let's try this again. Unless you are _below_ the pressure of the leftmost curve in the Paschen diagram above, the remaining gas in the chamber acts as a direct short circuit, or one of very low resistance. Yes, essentially _all_ the "voltage" you apply is shortcircuited by this low-resistance channel, even with large gaps. This means you _cannot_ build up high electric fields in such a case. If you attempt to overcome this by applying even more voltage from your power supply, a "power arc" develops and this is a direct short circuit which equalizes the potential (voltage) between its ends. "Gassy" vacuum tubes don't work properly any more! The force available to run electrostatic motors depends on two things: ions accelerated by electric fields and Newtonian reaction (ion motors, corona motors) and/or electric fields pulling-pushing charged material objects (Franklin motors, the free-ball cyclotron, the pingpong ball bouncer). If your voltage is short-circuited by a low-resistance channel-- as it will be anywhere in the region bounded by the Paschen diagram curves -- you will not be able to create strong electric field gradients!

Electric field gradient pushing/pulling a material object in a "linear" Franklin motor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxEpSX2Hd54 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxEpSX2Hd54)

Below are images of a corona motor: first, spinning in air, and next, same motor but not spinning, in the vacuum chamber.

@Tinselkoala,


                   Thanks! I really appreciate your patience and consideration towards deepening my understanding. You're the best.


A quote from the Shinsei patent:


"Additionally, in the electrostatic motor according to the present invention, a stainless steel etc. or an inorganic insulator that produce less residual gas, such as porcelain or glass, are used as components. Therefore, the electrostatic motor can be used in the clean vacuum. Further, using a nonmagnetic material as a metallic components results in a nonmagnetic motor, which can be used in a strong magnetic field".



Stressing the importance of a "clean vacuum".

@Tinselkoala

last picture might be similar to the Koop-Etchells Effect (http://rotorheadsrus.us/documents/933.html).

Have a look at Lidmotor's "Lord Kelvin Replenisher" and "Electrostatic Motor":


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQduuyuWh8g

I don't know but I wonder if something like lenz law append when we made most of replenisher in the same axle.

Here an interseting video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bUwS87kX-c

So, aparently each time I want to found if friction is conservative it is not.

Awesome small device from Lidmotor! May it hold a secret for a selfrunner?

It never came to my mind to use a precharged cap as a power source... how retarded from me. This simple device shows that an approach from the other side can be more fruitful.

What did he say: so he precharged a smallcap [ 0.015 µF,  250V ]  with a simple 3 volt battery? And this drives the motor for 10 minutes. For so long??? Why doesn't it lose the charge during the rotation?

It also brings me back to the Testatika, which was self-rotating. It's definitely possible to charge up small caps with rectified electrostatic impulses from some kind of Wimshurst device and it doesn't take 10 minutes. So if you can charge up some caps bank quicker than it draws the power...

Oh, wait, and let's say we have electrets to charge up the caps or directly power the motor? Even more fun...

Normaly when we turn a motor or a generator we produce electromagnetic and electrostatic electricity but the second one is never used.
at least it seems to be that thing...

@Lidmotor adds a capacitor:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfHTZkCrS4A (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfHTZkCrS4A)


@Lasesabre's got a strong contender for atmospheric motor:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do4IO_U3B5o (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=do4IO_U3B5o)

This brings me back again to the original problem: "only then will electric charge persist in the capacitor, when it is charged with sufficient amperage, otherwise the charge will vanish quickly."

So how can we charge up a cap with electrostatics? The only way to get an amperage seems to be impulses via a spark gap. While this works, general electrostatic devices require significant time to charge up and provide a lightning thick enough. If there was a way to do it without...

Has anyone tried a magnetically quenched spark gap (someone in the Kapanadze thread mentioned this) to charge a cap? Note that you need to separate magnets and spark gap via plexiglass (maybe even a vacuum tube around the spark gap?), so the lightning can't jump on the magnets, but this way you can put the magnets very close to the spark gap. But who knows, maybe you'll see a difference only with multiple quenched spark gaps... oh well this just sounds too easy.

Hmm... maybe the rectifier is the problem. If I use a simple 4-Si-diode rectifier circuit to catch the impulses it might kill the "magnetically enhanced" charge effect. Maybe that's where another type of rectifier must be used... some old tube rectifiers or so...?!

With the ping pong ball of Thomas Kim I have this theorical idea.
Maybe it will perform the cop realy near to 1, maybe it will overpass it but for the moment I realy don't know.

Not wanting to go too much offtopic but I just found on youtube a guy having some vids about a magnetically quenched sparkgap http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwVvHgbJdzA (there are more vids on his channel too)

And one of his comments "By using this magnetic quench approach the inpulse duration is shorter and thus a higher instantaneous power is produced" and "I think the sound is higher/louder because the discharge is more abrupt. The energy from the capacitor discharge is not allowed to be a "soft" discharge, it has to happen more suddenly because the lorentz force is pushing on the arc as current flows. This probably causes the cap to charge a little higher before it can discharge again, and so, more energy louder sound."....

Before today, I did not know that, the Schinger limit is very interesting.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwinger_limit

I see that when I clic on the number of the dielectric strength of the vacuum here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_strength

For a low vacuum it is at least a litle more than 150 MV/M

Here a link to know one of the values of the electrostatic:
http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/efield.html

Mh, the result of his calcul is false it is 29.47 microamps...
imax = 3.14 x (0.13² - 0.09²) x 40 x 26.55 = 29.47

His wimshurst turn very well when he remove his hand (between 1:22 and 1:31):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9QSPMdJa68
If we compare with a simple electromagnetic motor the wimshurst is very efficient, for exemple I have a portable lamp with a crank and when I turn the crank with a good force and when I remove my hand the crank stop to turn lesser than one seconde.
In the video, if we do the calcul of a cap who is:
E=0.5xCxU²
If the space is approxymately 10 centimeters and we have a good day:
100 (millimeters)x3000 (or 3600 volts)
If the layden jars have aproximately 50 or 100 pico farads, whe have:
E=0.5x0.0000000001x300000²=4.5 watts
4.5 watts in 6 or 7 seconds, start to 1:11 finish to 1:17

That sounds reasonable. It might be in fact more efficient theoretically, but unless these watts can be transformed into watts useable by our tools, it's unfortunate. I mean the Wimshurst doesn't even achieve a glimmer on a 80 milliwatt bulb, which a simple bicycle dynamo does easily.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX-jrlGC-aA

Quote from: gauschor on January 01, 2014, 11:37:34 AM
That sounds reasonable. It might be in fact more efficient theoretically, but unless these watts can be transformed into watts useable by our tools, it's unfortunate. I mean the Wimshurst doesn't even achieve a glimmer on a 80 milliwatt bulb, which a simple bicycle dynamo does easily.

On the other hand, a Wimshurst or Bonetti or VanDeGraaff can light up neons and gutted CFLs easily, where the simple bike dynamo doesn't produce even a glimmer. Apples and oranges.

Well, you can transform up from a bike dynamo and then light neons as well, but you'll not achieve it the other way round - transforming down a Wimshurst :( There must be a trick to do that, as the Testatika worked too, but we don't know it. So the electromagnetic power generation still rules, as it's more universal for usage.

Quote from: gauschor on January 02, 2014, 08:50:47 AM
Well, you can transform up from a bike dynamo and then light neons as well, but you'll not achieve it the other way round - transforming down a Wimshurst :( There must be a trick to do that, as the Testatika worked too, but we don't know it. So the electromagnetic power generation still rules, as it's more universal for usage.

That's because all the infrastructure and all the devices we use these days are geared toward low voltage high current power systems. I agree that electromagnetic power generation rules, for a number of reasons. But consider this: Electrostatic, high voltage low current systems, can be built without actual drawn wires, without chemical batteries, without magnets, without complicated components like capacitors or transformers. IOW, it is very _low_ technology dependent. In principle, electrostatic machines could have provided mechanical power and lighting, even thousands of years ago, without any sophisticated machining or manufacturing technology.

The high voltages at low currents from ESmachines can be stored in HV capacitors connected in series. Then these caps can be functionally connected in parallel and discharged that way, at lower voltages and higher currents. Think "marx bank" in reverse.

The Testatika machines are not electrostatic machines. That's a red herring. Even Baumann's description of one disk as "cloud" and the other as "earth" gets it wrong: machines like Wimshurst and Bonetti separate charges by Left and Right Halves... both disks are charged the same way, with one lateral half being "cloud" and the other half being "earth".

Actually, when you think about it, most of our present electrical power goes through an "electrostatic" phase during transmission: very high voltage transmission lines operating at hundreds of kV and relatively low currents bring the power from the generating plants to local substations, where it is "down-converted" by multi-stages of transformers, very heavy and expensive.

Quote from: TinselKoala on January 02, 2014, 07:24:58 PM
That's because all the infrastructure and all the devices we use these days are geared toward low voltage high current power systems. I agree that electromagnetic power generation rules, for a number of reasons. But consider this: Electrostatic, high voltage low current systems, can be built without actual drawn wires, without chemical batteries, without magnets, without complicated components like capacitors or transformers. IOW, it is very _low_ technology dependent. In principle, electrostatic machines could have provided mechanical power and lighting, even thousands of years ago, without any sophisticated machining or manufacturing technology.

The high voltages at low currents from ESmachines can be stored in HV capacitors connected in series. Then these caps can be functionally connected in parallel and discharged that way, at lower voltages and higher currents. Think "marx bank" in reverse.

The Testatika machines are not electrostatic machines. That's a red herring. Even Baumann's description of one disk as "cloud" and the other as "earth" gets it wrong: machines like Wimshurst and Bonetti separate charges by Left and Right Halves... both disks are charged the same way, with one lateral half being "cloud" and the other half being "earth".

but; it's a matter of energy per second... how much power can it impart... I₁E₁=I₂E₂

Quote from: d3x0r on January 02, 2014, 07:28:59 PM
but; it's a matter of energy per second... how much power can it impart... I₁E₁=I₂E₂

No dispute there, except that energy is the important quantity not Power. Power is energy, dissipated over a time. You can have short bursts of high power or longer supplies of less power, all for the same energy. So your normal "ES" discharge is a short, highpower burst, since the voltage is very high even though the current is small. So you take the storage cap stack and "rewire" it from series HV/low current to parallel LV/high current. You are discharging the same energy in both cases; the first case might not be usable even though it is "high power" since it is so short. The second case, same energy discharged over longer time periods, is low voltage, high current and goes on for longer times. Same energy, captured as ES high voltage, but discharged at lower voltage higher current, usable in our present devices using wires and magnets.

Interesting the thing about a reversed Marx bank / Marx generator. Didn't hear from that before. I'm gonna take a read about it.

Last interesting video of lidmotor:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l_VYGAJP8g&list=UU9jbwyyAum79LXTNCgHeuFg&feature=c4-overview
The heat(?) finger on negative side move the close electrostatic motor.
I think that is the heat of but I'm not sure.

Not heat. Transfer of charge through the capacitance of the body and the space between the parts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX-jrlGC-aA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX-jrlGC-aA)

(High voltage source is a small Van De Graaff machine off to the left of the screen. My body is not grounded or connected to anything else.)

Since I can't find the answer to my question as to how electrostatic-charges dissipate, 
    that is,  whether a normal smooth surface looses it's electrostatic-charge into the air over time,  or whether it can only transmit that charge to another object,
I can't work out the answer to the question below .

   ( There are several different types of electrostatic-motors  )

   Electrostatic-Motor In A Vacuum
       If you placed a suitable type of  electrostatic-motor( for this vaccum question ) into the highest vacuum that can be achieved :

    -  Would the motor run for a longer time,  than in a non-vacuum,   before dissipating all of it's charge  ?

    -  I assume that putting it into a vacuum,  could not turn it into a perpetual-motion device

    -  Each time a  moving-charged-component  of the motor( in the vacuum ) discharges some of it's charge to a stator in the motor,  would it visually look like one of those plasma-globes  ?

    -  Could some additional wiring( and maybe electronics ) turn it into a  self-running  perpetual-motion device,   ?