Joule Ringer!

[resonanceman]

To the best of my understanding, I have used dot notation to illustrate the transformer, please see attached. And here I would briefly explain how I understand the working of the Joule Ringer. Note that I am no expert, so please excuse my rather brute way of expressing my thoughts below.

Static analysis of the Joule Ringer circuit:

1. The points of interest in the circuit: the pins 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 of the transformer; the + and - pin of the electrolytic capacitor; the E, B, C of the transistor.

2. The circuit consists of three loops (loops will be shown by visiting the points of interest as given above). Loop (1): +, 5, 6, C, E, - (this is the Joule Thief type driving loop). Loop (2): +, 4, 2, B, E, - (this is the Joule Thief type trigger loop, which clearly includes the bifiler coil, as does the next loop). Loop (3): +, 4, 3, - (this is the Big Joule Thief type power loop, which also includes the modified CFL).

Once identified these three loops in the circuit, let's call them driving, trigger, and power loops, and each loop contains exactly one part of the coil in the transformer, and let's call those coils the driving, trigger, and power coils.

Dynamic analysis of the Joule Ringer circuit:

The circuit works cyclically. Let's say the cycle starts at the moment when the driving coil 5,6 has no current.

The driving and trigger loops work almost the same way as the Joule Thief circuit, which I will pass for now (however, scope shots suggests that the transistor could switch on twice in one cycle will be explained later, let's ignore such subtlety for the time being, which won't really hurt much of the understanding of the first order effects).
Basically, the current in the driving coil climbs up flowing from pin 5 to 6, then at a certain point, the transistor turns off, and the current drops to zero all in a sudden, causing great spike of voltages in the other coils. As the current in the driving coil drops down to zero, the cycle starts again.

The power loop. When the current in the driving coil is climbing up, some induced induced voltage over the power coil (from pin 4 to 3), but the current should be tiny by reason of the diodes and the induced voltage being relatively small compared to what will happen next. Next, when the current in the driving coil collapses all in a sudden, huge spike of voltage is induced in the power coil (arching could be observed at this moment), the direction is from pin 2 to 4, causing a brief recharging of the electrolytic capacitor through the bifiler and diodes.

At the recharging moment, by reason of the capacitance of bifiler, big voltage is developed across it, and if the voltage is high enough (higher than the induced voltage in the trigger coil at that moment), the transistor could be turned on again briefly. That is why the scope shots suggests that the transistor could switch on twice in one cycle.

Comments on the bifiler and diodes

From the analysis above, the ideal function of the bifiler+diodes in the power loop is to encourage recharging of the electrolytic capacitor in the collapsing stage and discourage the current flow from the electrolytic capacitor in the building stage (when the current of the driving coil climbs up).  Replacing the diodes by a pot may still work because of the induced voltages on the power coil during the two stages are dramatically different in magnitude.

Finally, this analysis is limited in traditional wisdom, I can not exclude the possibility that some abnormal thing happened during the recharging stage, maybe in the bifiler coil or somewhere else.

Hope this somehow helps replicating.

lanenal

lanenal

Thanks for taking the time  to post your analysis

I found it very helpful


gary

[lanenal]

This reminds me of the Micro TPU!
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=3599.30

Thanks for digging that out and bringing the similarity up. BTW, is that source cap also electrolytic?

Modify: went to the thread and found out that it is indeed an electrolytic cap. The scope shots there seems to indicate that the Micro TPU works at a very low frequency (below 1Hz?).

So, maybe the joule ringer can also be implemented using a toroid core.

[lanenal]

Thanks for digging that out and bringing the similarity up. BTW, is that source cap also electrolytic?

Modify: went to the thread and found out that it is indeed an electrolytic cap. The scope shots there seems to indicate that the Micro TPU works at a very low frequency (below 1Hz?).

So, maybe the joule ringer can also be implemented using a toroid core.

It might be of interest to replicators to make it as simple as possible, I would like to post a 2-coil schematic. Basically, the trigger coil and the power coil are replaced by one coil that actually performs both functionality.

lanenal

Edit: some comments are in order.

1. The number of turns are not specified, you may try 100:100 bifiler on a toroid or something, as a starting point, then increase the turns on the right side (with the CFL).

2. If the voltage is not high enough to lit the CFL, you can try put a magnet near the core (this idea comes from slayer who discovered huge voltage increase when a magnet is nearby a big joule thief.

3. The idea implemented in the Kickback Joule Ringer (a few posts before) to kickback the energy stored in the driving coil can be incorporated into this one almost as is.

[4Tesla]

Here is another similar topic:
Gadgetmall's Fuji Mod light CFL from 1 AA/AAA for - 12 hrs +
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6932.0
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6933.10
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6934.0

Which of the circuits in this thread has given the longest run time?

[lanenal]

Here is another similar topic:
Gadgetmall's Fuji Mod light CFL from 1 AA/AAA for - 12 hrs +
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6932.0
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6933.10
http://www.overunity.com/index.php?topic=6934.0

Which of the circuits in this thread has given the longest run time?

The objective here is to run the CFL from a small cap say 10mF
for a good duration, say half an hour. If I understood correctly,
with proper setup, an AA/AAA bat could be used to recharge
the cap many times, thus the total run time could be months.