Quote from: geovel56 on July 13, 2008, 05:36:13 PM

We still need to figure out why the plasma arcs are sporadic even though we observed the HV spark every time.  Any help, ideas, and thoughts are welcome!

Regards,
Geo

I thought it looked pretty clear that since you were using a half wave you had only half of the power available(?).  That could easily explain the intermittent firing.

Cheers
Shiver

Quote from: bumfuzzled on July 13, 2008, 04:38:13 PM
Exactly, that's why I just added a plug to mine. I put it right on the edge of the squish area hoping it'll swirl the water right onto the plug as the piston comes up. I really think a very small combustion chamber would help alot too. I believe that lil motor you've got there will run. I forgot to take a pic after I bored the hole so the arrow is pointing to where the new hole is. The new plug is on the right in the second pic.

Hi Bulmfuz,

If you would drill and tap a small 1/8 hole betwen those two plugs, put a 1/8 injector tube in it, give or take, put a small nozzle/restrictor to spray it on the outlet, feed water to it with a high pressure check valve so water could go/suck in with the down stroke, but nothing go out on the upstroke, needle valve it so you could control total amount/stroke, I think you could have a very nice injector on that B&S engine.  I plan to do that on my next SMALLER engine.  You need solid steel or brass up to the check valve, then any type of tubing after that.

Ben

Thankx geovel56 for the reply. lol I have been so busy bench testing that I "forgot" about the engine starting. I guess I'm getting ahead of myself again.

I thought it looked pretty clear that since you were using a half wave you had only half of the power available(?).  That could easily explain the intermittent firing.

Cheers
Shiver

I'm not sure you understand the circuit then.  The power on the LV side is coming from the capacitor discharge (just like all the other circuits others have displayed).  It takes a few milliseconds to charge up fully.  Once it is fully charged, all the power in the world as input will not charge it up any more (and probably fry everything with "all the power input in the world!"  LOL). 

Manually flipping the switch back and forth could never get close to being faster than the LV capacitor part of the circuit charges up and discharges.  The ignition coil fires every time no matter how fast I flipped the switch (because again, I could never flip it faster than the coil charges and discharges.  I don't think a bigger capacitor on the LV side will do any better, but that will be my next test, maybe 100 microfarad capacitor.

Regards,
Geo

Several of you are way ahead of me on engine modifications already. I'm still working on a high speed plasma spark and did a small test by confining the spark and topping it with a marble. The video shows the water does make a difference in actual work energy. I noticed the 'pulse' was also able to shake bits of dust loose from the rafters, I would see this float down after a test with the open ended chamber. You can feel this pulse if you hold you hand a foot away. Here is the video of my brief test.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_yn0AOUnOU

RD