PhysicsProf Steven E. Jones circuit shows 8x overunity ?

[JouleSeeker]

  Here's a decent write-up on how to extract magnets from a microwave oven.  Be sure to safely discharge the big capacitor first thing!
http://www.c-realevents.demon.co.uk/inprogress/mcwave/mwave.html

And photos of the magnets coming out of the magnetron, and of a simple Faraday-paradox dynamo (call it "Faradox"):

[TinselKoala]

Low resistance is the key to success with homopolar generators. Think about it... the maximum voltage may be only a few hundreds of millivolts or 1 volt for tabletop machines at reasonable speeds. So any resistance in contacts or external circuits will kill the power. Once you've got very low contact resistance you can get amazing currents, but the voltage will always be low and Ohm's Law will always be respected.
May I recommend for your consideration the material called Gal-In-Stan? It is the eutectic alloy of gallium, indium and tin, and has many advantages over mercury for liquid-metal contacts. It's non toxic and has extremely low vapor pressure, for example.
Molten solder has also been used to good effect but it's a bit messy and harder to arrange than a nice room-temperature liquid metal contact.
Another good way of making contact with the rim of the generator disk wheel is to use a metal belt, as if the wheel were a pulley. Run the metal belt or band around another smaller pulley and take the contact from its shaft.
Careful though ... it is easy to weld ball bearings with the currents produced by HPGs.

[JouleSeeker]

Thanks for the input, TinselKoala, especially regarding the Indium-based eutectic.
However -- I am seeking to extract power WITHOUT any external (non-moving) brushes or contacts...!

   I would be interested to hear if you / anyone thinks this is even POSSIBLE.  Thomas Valone experiments, etc., may suggest it is not possible.  I wonder what he thinks about this today...Meanwhile, yesterday evening I succeeded with my first homopolar GENERATOR.  Photos below will help a brief explanation.

First, I designed a simple motor using a 1" diam neo magnet with metal casing, held magnetically to a short/fat bolt.  (Extra mass helps keep it spinning during the generator phase.)  This in turn holds to a screw which I punched through a box to hold the system from above.  The screw-tip provides a good "bearing".

1.5 V is applied from a DC power supply shown, and the 1.77 A is typical for revving up the motor.  +1.5V to the screw, ground via contact wire to the rim of the magnet-disk.

Then, with the magnet+bolt spinning magnet spinning and power supply disconnected, it now has a potential due to {E = velocity X B effects} -- that is, it serves now as a generator.  Yes, even with the magnet co-spinning with the bolt. 

To measure the effect, I have connected one probe of an ammeter to the screw and the other via a separate contact wire, touching the rim of the spinning magnet.  One hand holds the contact wire, the other hand holds the camera -- and you see 0.9 mA measured on the meter produced by the simple homopolar ammeter, demonstrating output power from the homopolar generator.

This experiment was repeated several times.  About 1mA current was typical.  The voltage will be small (as TK correctly observed) especially with such a small diameter rotating magnet and has not been measured, but current generation has been demonstrated and measured.

[neptune]

Can I ask a fundamental question here? Generators of all types and sizes are commercially available. So what if any, are the advantages of a homopolar generator? Is it possible that this type of generator produces power without drag? In other words, is the "run down" time the same with or without the load? It would appear that Edison found a way to mitigate the problems with rim contacts. His generator uses 2 discs and 3 magnets , arranged so that the discs are of opposite polarity. The rims are connected together, and power is drawn from the two seperate shafts.

[Magluvin]

I had a few ideas back in a homopolar gen thread a while back. It was more of a configuration where you put together 2 thin bar magnets south to south so that the 2 north poles faced outward.

In my thoughts, the larger the area of the pole sides, the better. Now wind the copper wire around the mag samich ;]   Now, instead of 1 big conductor(disk) we have many conductors in series giving us more voltage generated at the output.

Say we use an led as a load and connect it to the leads of the winding.

Now, this is where we use the paradox to our advantage like Depalma.  With the mag samich with coil wound on it and led connected as 1 unit, if we attach it to the outer rim of a say bicycle wheel, say 2 to balance the bicycle wheel, if the orientation of the unit is in motion emulates the paradox, the led should light, just by moving it through space(energy in the vacuum, dark energy, the field that exists all around us), the gen should light the led.

Imagine a gen of this sort in an electric car. The faster you go the more the batteries charge.

The mag samich that I came up with allows current to be generated in the coil like the Faraday. If the wheel is spun in the opposite direction, or mag poles are reversed, from what I know, the current is reversed, from center to outer rim  to  rim towards the center.

So by making the mag samich same pole out on both sides, this allows Us to easily wind the pickup as I described while both sides will generate current as a sum of all the turns as it moves through space. If Depalma, and I believe Tesla said it also, mounted the mags to the copper disk, so the mag and disk move as one, then we are essentially doing the same thing without the complications and restrictions of known designs. 

Even if it were to be made into an axle driven gen, brushes would be of standard kind and with higher voltages, and the amperage handling of the brushes need not be that great as what the standard Faraday gen needs to be successful in any manor of producing readily usable common output voltages and currents.

It has been on my list of things to do for a while now. Will try to get something put together by the weekend. Its simple enough to do, and may have strange potential. ;]

If there is no drag as it moves through space, this could be pandoras box on steroids. 

Saw what you posted at OUR today Prof anf thought you might be interested. It has all the ingredients to function and provide more output voltage due to each half turn of the coil on the mags is a faraday generated voltage all added in series.

And it is easier than what weve seen. And no brushes or friction of any kind.  Its frickin genius if ya ask me. ;]

Mags n The Moonies