Computer Control of a PWM design. work in progress.

[lefferdink]

Hi everyone and glad someone is getting well. Hope everyone is getting well.
I have a small question about the design components, namely the capacitors. We won't be using any Bipolar caps will we?
Have acquired a digi-key, Allied catalogue and digital soldering iron. At what temp should I be using and type of heat sink?

[Feynman]

I use a cheap radio shack soldering iron, haha.  It has no temp control.   I really should get a new one...   One way to tell is use the lowest temp that melts the solder you are using, where things are still easy to work with.

Btw the digikey catalog is great!

[z.monkey]

Email from Lefferdink:

Hi z.monkey.
Our forum seems to be a little dead. I wonder if you can make two pcb's that lanmasterd posted on this forum for me.  I have the full book on the Hydrostar system(HHO production).  If you make the boards I' ll pay for them greatfully & humbly in american money of course.  I am a person of action and sitting and waiting is not for me.  I have purchased all of the parts I need to start on the two boards, and then some. 
What kind of device do you used in order to make these boards? How much more education is needed?

If you want a copy of the book, I believe that I can e-mail it to you with no strings attached.  The hydrostar generator I will not use.

Howdy Lefferdink:

What you need is protoboard.  This way you can get started as soon as you get the
material.  Look in your Mouser catalog on page 2108.  Find the Vectorboard Circbord
Printed Circuit Prototyping Boards.  There are a wide variety of boards to choose
from.  I have built a bizillion circuits using these boards.  Now these are protoboard
PCBs as opposed to specific design PCBs.  Protoboards are general purpose where
the specific design PCBs only support one circuit.  It is not cost effective to design
a specific design PCB when you are prototyping.  It is feasible and you can do it, but
it is very expensive.  PCB designers only make specific design PCBs when we are going
to build lots of copies, go into production and sell lots of boards.  You can get
protoboards anywhere Mouser, Digikey, Allied, Radio Hut.

When you get a protoboard you need to think about your circuit before you start
soldering down parts.  You want to layout the parts in a manner which minimizes long
wires.  A lot of times you don't even need extra wires to connect components.  You
can use resistor and capacitor leads that are longer than needed.  Remember to keep
your circuits neat and orderly.  The protoboard can be cut easily and made into any
shape to fit any enclosure.  This is definitely a skill and will take practice, so if your
first board isn't very pretty that is OK.  The next one will be better.  After you have
built a bizillion, like me, you will be a pro and someone else will be asking you questions.

When a Circuit Board Designer goes to actually design a PCB they use Printed Circuit
Board Design Software like OrCAD Layout, or Pads Power PCB.  These are expensive
pieces of CAD (Computer Aided Design) software specifically designed for the design
of printed circuit boards.  These tools produce files called gerbers which are pictures of
each layer of the board.  The gerber files are sent to a PCB fabricator where the
gerbers are fed into a CAM  (Computer Aided Manufacturing) machine which actually
fabricates the PCBs with a  complex process of photolithography, microdrilling,
chemical etching, and CAM machining.  The PCB designer can be specialized in printed
circuit boards specifically, but it helps to have a background in electronics and/or
manufacturing.  I am multitalented being an Electrical and Electronic Engineer with
a large amount of experience in manufacturing.  I am also a software engineer with
experience in 5 languages.  Then, also, I recently achieved the title of CID+, which is
Advanced Certified Interconnect Designer, meaning I am a master at printed circuit
board design.

The circuits that Lanmasterd posted in the forum are pretty straightforward and you
shouldn't have any trouble building them on a protoboard.  When dealing with timers
I suggest that you get an oscilloscope to look at the signals that you are producing.
Troubleshooting an oscillating circuit without an oscilloscope can be difficult.  You can
post any questions that you have on the forum, I will keep an eye on it.  This way
other people can see the pitfalls of circuit design.

OK, Mo Later...

[lefferdink]

Hi Guys: 
ZMonkey I have an oscilloscope & bought it 5 or 7 years ago and it just sat and now I don't know where the instructions are. It is an Elenco S-3000 A.  It is new and not used.  Some guy at American Legion took a class ( home study) and never followed up. Gave him $80 or $100 for it and then I moved to AZ 5 years later. If I blow it up, I blow it up.  Working on a circuit just for the fun of it and learning how to  solder all over again.  It's the one I had Lanmastered post.
Did anyone see pwmpower.com's generator?  He is using brute force straight from the battery and a third center tube in the nest (27 tubes I count). I want to use more than that for mine, and is it ever getting so expensive for this experiment.
Gasoline just went up again $3.69 here in AZ, the cheap stuff.

[z.monkey]

Howdy Y'all,

Lefferdink did you get a new scope, or are you using the Elenco.  How is the prototyping going?  I have been busy installing a Radiant Barrier on my house, so I haven't had much time to play with the Soft Particle Reactor lately.  I did have a thought about the HHO driver circuit.  After seeing the "singing bowl" thread I thought that the HHO driver needs to be resonant, and melodic.  OK, what I mean here is the water will crack easier if the driver is producing sine wave forms rather that square wave forms.  In music there is a term called dissonance.  Dissonance is produced by producing two tones that do not have the same harmonics.  The effect is the bad sounding chord.  Two tones that have the same harmonics produce a pleasant sounding chord.  I am theorizing that the dissonant chord has disruptive properties.  These disruptive properties could potentially be used to "crack" water.  By exposing the water to an electromagnetic dissonant chord produced by an HHO driver we could literally shake the water molecules apart with the dissonance.  Rather than using brute force, we are going to out think the water molecule and find the right combination of frequencies that will produce the right dissonant chord which will crack the water.

OK, Mo Later...

Blessed Be Brothers...