Where's Van De Graff On This Board?

[Clara Listensprechen]

Where can I find on this board any discussion of Van De Graff?  Danged if I don't zap myself with kilovolts everytime my shoes shuffle across the rug.  Not to mention that static has enough oomph to cause fires at gasoline stations given a truck's poly bed liner and a boneheaded driver not wise enough to ground nozzle and truck together properly before fueling up.

There's so much natural energy in static that it makes my hair stand on end.  YES I am aware that this animal is high-voltage-low-current, but somewhere else on this board was discussed the photovoltaic properties of the 2N3055, which turns out to be high-current-low-voltage.

Anybody else besides me think that the Van De Graff and the 2N3055 oughta get married?

Discuss.

[raburgeson]

Yes useful, the Van De Graff. The government has used them for years. The size is a problem. Winhurst generators can be made smaller. Several rotors can be set in series in a smaller area. They have a few problems that exist, and can be over come, it needs to be in a sealed case. Humidity lowers its ability to produce. Also it has the inherent problem of arcing and reversing polarity. I was trying seal a thin aluminium disk inside the rotor to create a capacitance hoping to overcome the reversal. I haven't given it enough of my time, I think capacitance will fix the problem, I keep getting dragged off on other projects. Also an improved design of the Van De Graff uses pellets instead of a belt, gives a bit more amperage. Make your own brushes, comercial ones are easy to beat, by all means buy some to get you up and running quickly. Experiment though it's worth it. Choice of materials, there are accurate charts are on the net, try to choose materials from opposite ends of the chart. Just a tip you may want to apply a different surface to the belt. The reason most people aren't looking in this direction is the static motor has very little developement time and is not all that efficient. A little time and improvement is needed in this area. A.C. motors have almost 70 years of developement and the efficiency is drawing most people into other areas of research. The best I can tell you is go for it, and good luck, even though it's not in a readily usable voltage these devices do generate a great deal of energy, and I think that's the point of being here, we are all trying to generate power.

[TinselKoala]

It seems that the VDG machine is somewhat misunderstood. Careful construction and a little perseverance can give you a tabletop source of very high voltage, without the dangers inherent in more powerful power supplies. Yet the energy can be accumulated in capacitors for down-conversion and use.
Here are a couple of videos showing simple (and crude!) VDG machines that I built over the last couple of days. The second one can reach 115 kilovolts without difficulty, and cost about 12 dollars to build.
These machines can be driven with any source of rotational power, like a windmill, water wheel, hand crank, hamster, exercise bike, you name it. With a little care and cleverness you can accumulate a LOT of power, even from a tiny demonstration device like this one.

The most coherent theories of extracting the real "zero point" energy have to do with polarizing the vacuum, to change its index of refraction. The way to do this is by using extremely high electric field densities and gradients. I'm afraid the 2n3055 wouldn't survive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj5T0zRALKc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLkgGkEzk0c

[TinselKoala]

Here are a few still shots of my small VDG. I've made some improvements, and now it regularly gives 55 mm sparks, for an estimated 140 kV or so, every 5 or 6 seconds. The stress from the E-field is palpable for several feet in all directions. As a simple and cheap high-voltage source, that is also relatively safe, it can't be beat.

[DreamThinkBuild]

@TinselKoala, great job on the setup.

Here is the simplest Van De Graff I could find.

http://scitoys.com/cgi-bin/board/show.cgi?tpc=1&post=22366#POST22366