Eldarion and Bruce's build of Bob's Energy Converter

[eldarion]

Hi Bruce,

I have actually been hooking the magnetic bias up now and then to see if it would have any effect.  So far, every time I connect it, nothing at all happens to either the input or output waveforms.  Same with the HV DC potential.  I wonder if the potential fields will only have an effect after all the other criteria are met and the energy conversion process starts?

The most pressing concern right now is that high leakage inductance--unless we can get that fixed, the ringing will not disappear and the effect will never manifest.

I'll see if I can hook primaries 1 and 2 in series, also 3-4 and 5-6, that way three primaries will be emulated and maybe the coupling will increase.

Eldarion

EDIT: No-go on the three-primary emulation.  The leakage is just too high.

Not sure where to go with this, short of re-winding the primaries...even that may not help, as I am not quite sure why there is such high leakage and low coupling. 

How many layers of tape are separating the primary and secondary windings?  The closer those windings are, the better the coupling.  (This is why many SMPS cores are wound multifilar).  Right now, we are wasting most of the input power as stray magnetic fields that are not coupling to the secondary or even the core!

Unless this is what is supposed to happen, in order to couple into the longitudinal energy flow.  Bob, would you mind jumping in here and preventing me from going somewhere I shouldn't?

Thanks!

Eldarion

[Bruce_TPU]

Hi Eldarion,

I have one layer of HV Electrical tape, followed by one layer of Motor tape.  This is over the Secondary, under the primaries.  This was done after Bob B. had mentioned this in a phone conference.  It was to make for a "flatter" winding of the primaries, if I recall the comment.

hummm........ 

That might be a part of the problem.  I do not know.  I think Bob has run 6 primaries before, thus the "Hex" controller, so I would not think that was the problem.

So, yes, some help from Bob here, is needed.   

Warm regards,
Bruce

[eldarion]

Maybe there's hope yet:
I was running some tests with two adjacent primaries in series and the secondary hooked up to a potentiometer.  This configuration damped out the oscillations very effectively when the potentiometer was set to 600 ohms; no additional power draw was noticed when the RCD snubber was inserted on the primary side.

Schematic:
http://www.falconir.com/pics/single_primary_no_oscillation_test.jpg

Scope shot:
http://www.falconir.com/pics/single_primary_no_oscillation_scope.jpg

I was able to confirm the dependence on load impedance--vary that output resistor just a little from 600 ohms, and the oscillations come back full force.  Also confirmed is that pulse width and frequency can be varied without reintroducing the oscillations for a given load impedance.

Now we will see if this will scale well to the rest of the primaries or not...

Also, I wonder why this type of circuitry is not seen on Bob's PWM3F?  I can understand that the cell stack would present a nice relatively constant impedance and therefore avert the ringing, but there would still be a large inductive spike without the RCD snubber like what I have across my primary coil here.

Onwards...

Eldarion

[HumblePie]

Hi Eldarion,

The four main components, of which, if any are missing, is an incomplete, non working device:
1.  Properly wound coil
2.  Magnetic bias of non pulsed 13.5 vdc minimum for over unity to occur.
...Warm regards,
Bruce

Bruce, Eldarion,

Series resistance is needed with the Magnetic Bias Coil(s) to limit Amps to 150mA.  I tested two 10 Ohm 1/4 W in series with the 1.2 Ohm outer winding for 21.2 Ohms TL and found 3.25V yielded the max 150mA and no heat anywhere with just this level of DC.   Bob will correct me if I am mistaken.  However, what about the inside winding?  Shoudn't we be driving this with the same drive as the outer winding?.. or is this already being tried?  Both polarities tried?  I apologize for piping up instead of being up by now, but I have asked about this spec before and did not hear back.

Ward

[MarkSnoswell]

Hi Eldarion,
    It's great to have someone actually testing stuff .. but a bummer that things are so frustrating for you.

This is just my 2 cents worth... I would be looking to run at resonance -- the core resonance, not lumped LC resonance. The ringing is not wasting any energy -- on the contrary it's because the energy is staying in the core that you get ringing.
Let me give you a parallel example -- in good Tesla coil design you aim for a coipling coeficent of 0.05 or so. This lets the primary and secondary circuits ring up with quire high Q's which is essential to opperation. You still get the same energy transfer in the end -- it's just that a lot of energy is buit up in the resonnant circuits as well.

Megnetic biasing I agree with -- but I have no idea how much... to be honest I would drive the magnetic bias resonantly to save energy. I know it's not a DC bias then -- it's an AC bias, but there are arguments for that working well also... can't say more.

Also -- corect me if I missed it, but I didn;t see that you were biasing up the primaries much ?? ... this was one of the predictions I made that Bob confirmed. He said that a *minimum* of 50V DC bias is required before the device reaches break even. After that the more bias applied the more power generated.

I'll hook up my core now and see if I can find it's fundamental resoance quickly.

cheers

mark.