New comer needs any and all help

[jhsmith87]

Okay cool I got it now I've got my coil I am a rotor done now. Heading to Radio Shack right now to get the neon bulbs. Also some resistors I guess I'll get half watt and 1/4 watt.

[jhsmith87]

What watt

[TinselKoala]

Good. You'll be up and running before you know it.

Here are some observations I've made that might be useful.

Transistors: Not every 2n3055 is created equal, it seems. I have a handful in my parts bin, some new and some pulled from equipment and replaced during some repairs. I tried them all in the Bedini motor, and the amount of HV spikes they produce varies widely. I have one here that runs the motor just fine, but makes no high voltage, or rather the HV is limited to just over 100 V. This transistor must be partially failed, even though at 12-20 volts input it still works on the slow motor drive pulses (15-30 Hz or so). I have several of the newer ones installed in Joule Thiefs and didn't want to take them apart, but the transistor I used right at first for the Bedini motor must have been a lucky pick because it was the one, out of six possibles, that made the highest voltage spikes... and I blew it last night.
Some of these transistors I have will only light the Neon when the rotor is spinning really fast and it's running on 24 volts or more. But the first one would fire the neon from just a little spin of the rotor wheel, and at 9 volts input. And one doesn't light the neon at all no matter how fast you spin, but it runs the motor fine anyway.
I thought, before now, that the transistor could be good or bad, and if it was bad it wouldn't even run the motor. But that's not the case; you can run the motor and still not get the HV spikes if your transistor is partially shorted.
I haven't seen my transistor get warm, even the one that failed didn't heat up, so the heat sink isn't needed, but I find that it looks "cool" and also makes the transistor easier to handle, so I always use them even if it's not strictly necessary.

Current: It's very helpful to monitor the input current with an inline milliammeter. You will know right away if there 's something wrong with the transistor, or if the motor is firing, even if the neon isn't blinking. The circuit draws essentially nothing when the rotor isn't spinning, so if you see anything other than about zero current when it's not spinning, something is wrong. And when you give it the starting spin, you can see on the milliammeter when the motor begins to fire, it will indicate a few mA if it's firing. If it stays at zero then there is something wrong.

Starting the motor: I have to give mine a pretty good spin to get it firing enough to start accelerating and running. It doesn't always start on the first spin, but if you spin it good and fast several times and still don't get a run, even when you know it's firing (from the ammeter and/or the neon) then there is something wrong. This motor produces tiny torque when it's starting up, it can barely get out of its own way, so if there is any drag it won't start spinning even if it's firing when you give it the start spin.

Coil orientation (angle): I've varied the angle, pointing the coil ahead or behind the straight radius, and I can't see a big effect on RPM until you get so far off it just stops firing. I don't know if there is supposed to be any directional bias, I can't find any, my motor runs equally well in either direction. I think you need to be very close to the rotor with the coil core; my clearance is less than 1/4 inch to the magnets, and they are _inside_ the jar lid, so the actual running clearance is about half that for my motor.

Coil wire phasing: The Bedini diagram shows how to wire the "top" and "bottom" ends of the coil. If you spin and don't get any current or flashes, try reversing one coil's wires at a time. There are 4 possible ways to wire the coils to the circuit: two will work and two will not, and of the two that do work, one might be slightly better. I get the same RPM for the same input voltage both ways but one way gives me about 10-20 percent less current draw, so that's the one I use.


As I think of more stuff I'll post it.


Don't worry, I'm not going to be doing a full-on investigation of the Bedini motor. There are plenty of people out there who have gotten very very deep into the variations and effects and various versions; looking at YT I see dozens of quality builds and great experiments. There won't be much I could possibly add to that knowledge base. I'm just tinkering, and trying to help beginners get started, but I'm just a Bedini beginner myself so don't expect either Free Energy or a comprehensive "debunk".... I'll just be playing around.
I have decided to sacrifice two of my good 12-v SLA batteries to the Bedini daemon, though. Once I get a new transistor that works optimally, I'll start running on one and charging the other one, and see how long I can swap them around before they both die.

[jhsmith87]

Just got back from the shack got my neons resistors and they had a bunch of transistors on clearance.:only 2n222 though. I got 100 for 5 dollars.
I got half watt 220 ohm resistors. That should be fine huh?

[jhsmith87]

Well good thing I got a few transistors. I'm about to b back home and I'm going to start worjin on the circuit. Hopefully this time I'll get it working. But I gotta say I don't have a lot of faith.