Maybe HMS would like to comment on this


Also I find it interesting that I appears many people do not seem to build the feedback coil
 even though Ronnie uses the Z value in all his calculations including the turns calculations.

Hi Earl ,
now you have measured
Any  pictures of your  bobbins finished being wound ?

I have put it aside for a few other personal projects.  Have been looking at it again the last week or so.  I currently have half the wire on feedback coil with remaining wire ready to be wound.  Then primary and secondary coils should not take to long.   Plan on doing some test after that to look at signals.  Not sure I have correct wire for chokes.  I do not thing what I have will stand up to high voltages.  Also have been thinking how to check for the required voltage differential needed on the output of the coils.  Make need to buy a differential probe for my scope to do that.

Articles in here say you need to have this but none that I was tell show how to check for it or what changes to make to correct it if is not correct.  I am assuming you take coils off one choke and put on the other.

Well I wound both the feed back coil and the primary.  I measured the length of the wire based on the manufactures ohms per foot then  cut wire to nearest 10ft mark on the high side.  I then wound the wire on the spool and cut off wire until I got the desired ohm value.  Note:  As this is a low ohm value resistance of the leads on the meter needs to be taken into account.  Mine are about 0.2 ohms.  After winding coils a when back to pictures in forum so see which way to hook up the primary.  I had forgot what the S and F labels meant S - Start and F - Finish also the Dot goes on with S and direction of wind only then needs to be the same to keep the Dot on the same side.   I had initially wound both coils clockwise start from the right side.  While this would work it did not match the picture and to avoid confusing myself when hooking things up.  I rewound both coils clockwise but starting from left side of spool.

Picture from this post
Re: "Understanding How Stan Meyers Fuel Cell Works"
« Reply #120, on October 27th, 2016, 03:00 PM »Last edited on October 29th, 2016, 02:21 PM

Interesting the feedback coil has 600 turns for 11.5 ohms and the primary 680 for 10.5 ohms. 

My next question was how does the primary coil hooked up to the VIC circuit.   The Project Icoros diagram I have showing bobbin size, coil layout and information on turns and ohm values also label S as - and F as + so I checked my VIC outputs where the primary will be connected with a volt meter.  The Analog side is + so the F side of coil will be connected to it.   The Digital side was - so the S side of coil will be connect to it (- side also has the 5A1KV connect to it).

Now I do not think primary coil cares which way it is hooked up as the flux with cycle in both directions.  Still I wanted to define how I hooked it up so I have a base line.

The Project Icoros diagram also labelled feedback S as + and F as - so I will use these setting as the initial connections for the inputs to K14. 

Next step will be wind the secondary coil as it is on the same frame.  It then plan to do tests with primary and feedback coils without the secondary hooked up.

Purpose of that test is to take a look at signals to primary coil and allow me to do initial testing of the feedback circuit which I have not been able to do.

nice update

Wound the primary coil 680 turns for 10.5 ohms estimate was 128.31 ft.  I wound it slightly longer then took off wire until I had the desired ohms.

Then I wound the secondary coil estimate was 884.74 feet.  I again would slightly longer and took off wire until I had the desired ohms.  It took 3150 turns.

I am not sure it this will give the correct turns ratio, but this is what I got with configuration I am using.  Have been wondering how to adjust ratio if not correct.   As I have said before coils are not my thing I can wind them not sure I understand them.

In the process of adding leads to hook up primary and feedback coils to circuit boards.  I ran out of solder I though I had another tube turns out it just the tube.

I also purchased some brass shim stock from Amazon to use as spacers for the gap between the cores. Ronnie recommended bass or copper in one of his posts when he was talking about adjusting the phase difference between the two chokes.

Goodson Brass Shim Stock Assortment | 5 Pack | 4 x 6 in. | .001.002.003.005 and .010 in. Thick

I do not recall anyone providing an estimate of what the gap size should be.  Ronnie talked about changing by .001 but only one side but not what total gap should be.  Not sure how to test to determine proper gap size.

Note:  I designed my setup to allow the ferrite pieces on each side to be easily slid out so I can easily change the spacers.  Plan is to have a screw on one or both ends of tube to keep pressure on spacers and ensure there are no other gaps between the pieces.

Picture shows the Primary on right Feedback in Middle  and Secondary on left before wrapping with tape.  Primary has temporary tape to keep wire in place while winding other two coils.  I have added pig tails to Primary and Feedback but have not yet put on shrink-wrap tape to protect solder connections. It also has the brass plates I will cut down for spaces.

Plan to use a resistor on secondary for initial testing as I want to take a look at wave forms and make sure feedback coil is working properly before making coke which will both be on other tube. 

nice

Finished winding Primary, Feedback and Secondary Coils.  See Picture  have added leads and put cores in tube.  Currently no gap.  For reference I place end tubes, one with cores, and other side in photo.  I plan on doing some testing with just the finished side to see wave forms.  I want to verify that Feedback works before I get to far.  After that test I plan on hooking secondary up to a resistor to check that is working and to again check wave form.  At that point is should be the same as primary output with higher voltage.

One of the tests I plan on doing is to see what the gap does does to the output of the secondary.

I am posting preliminary Feedback Coil tests to show the wave form out of the coil to the Pulse Sensing Board.  So this would be input to that board.  The main board frequency generator is not currently working correctly so it is putting out 41.67Hz pulse.  I believe that is also causing the large bump and start of each pulse.  I will post updated traces later.  Also no choke in system at this point just primary, secondary and feedback coils.

Photos show both the positive and negative pulse out of the feedback with both the digital and analog signals.  I only have a duel channel scope so can not get all three signals on the scope at the same time.

The scope with the purple trace is the math function A-B for the positive and negative FB signals.  I did this as this is the function performed by the Op Amp on the pulse board to generate signal going to Resonance Sensing board.

Note:  The 5v offset in the FB pulses (required as the GND reference on pulse sensing board is 0v instead of -12v).

The sensing load of the Pulse board on the feedback coil is tiny but the impendence load of FB coil is part of the load on the primary along with the secondary and chokes.   

Thanks Earl , nice scope shot,

what do you think max voltage back though the pick up coil can be ?
i mean if you put in 12v  will primary magnify it

we know we may get very high up to 600v from vic transformer as 1 set or more?
what would max back out of pick coil be>

dan

what ever it is  we x by 10 vics

Each vic would see the same voltage as I do not believe there is any connection between them so the voltage on the feedback coil in each vic should be the same.  Unless you are using special wire none of the coils are going to handle the extremely high voltage.  I know the the wire I am using that the insulation breaks down around 10kv.  There was a lot of comments about wire insulation in forum as most wire is double coated but we may need quad coating to handle high voltage and it does not seen to be commonly available.

As the windings on the feedback coil and the primary coil are very close I would expect the voltage level to be very close to voltage on primary as it is almost an 1 to 1 ratio.  Remember voltage level on feedback coil is determined by flux level as there is no electrical connection.

The output of the pulse board needs to be at 12v logic level, though the information in the signal is the current operating frequency.

What I did not show in the pictures above is that feedback coil does pick up the high frequency pulses on the top of the AM wave.  I have problem in my system so I could not get that scope shot when I capture pictures above. 

Some good news.  LM-318 chips I ordered arrived today (this is the equivalent replacement for the 918m).   They were $2 each from Fair Radio Sales I needed to order 5 as they have a $10 minimum.  I plugged it into socket of Pulse board and it worked as I hoped.  I now for the first time have a full working Pulse Indicator board.  I took another series of photo with new board in system.

Another piece of good new for me is I had noise in my K21 Phase Lock Circuit.  I could see it on the gate input, it was there when gate input hooked up but was gone when I look at gate input disconnected from K21.  This appeared to be causing problems with the circuit operation properly.  While trouble shooting I happen to notice that pin 8 4001, chip ground, was not in the socket.  I remove the chip, straighten the pin and reinstalled it.  I double checked that each pin was properly seated.  This solved my noise problem.  You can even see in picture below that bump on front of digital signal is now gone.

I retook screen shots see below:  I kept primary input to primary coil as reference for all four photos Yellow trace.
The first shows inputs to primary coil.  Yellow is digital signal and blue analog signal.
Second shows digital signal to primary and  blue plus output of feedback coil, plus input to Pulse Indicator circuit.
Third shows digital signal to primary and  blue negative output of feedback coil, negative input to Pulse Indicator circuit.
Fourth shows digital signal to primary and blue output of Pulse Indicator circuit.  This shows that the feedback coil is tracking the digital signal.

This is the first time I had the Pulse Indicator Circuit working and have this operation input to K21.  In the photo you can see that both signals are at the same frequency, though they are jumping around some on the screen.  As note the change in scale on the blue trace as the this input is at 12v logic level to K21. 

Not show here is I quickly checked the switch on front of K21 which selects the different frequency ranges.  With the problems I had  with K21 this was not working before, it is now.  Before only position 4 gave me a frequency now all four positions do.

Now that I have a working and tested Pulse Indicator board I will post the test results and analysis of the board just to be complete. The last photo below however is the main result and will be included in that report.

More Testing

Now that I have a working K14 (Feedback coil and Pulser Indicator Card) I when back to do some additional test looking at input to primary and output of Secondary. 

I followed the same test setup I used for the K14 testing:

I am using the K2 (M) output set to 41.67hz to drive all the gate and analog boards.

Gate is set to 50%

Analog signal level was set to be 2.32v anything less and the signal gets chopped.  If set higher there is addition noise in system that I was trying to avoid for this test.
Analog voltage offset and gain were also set to minimum levels.

I did set frequency to be 2khz and played around with gain and offset setting to see what they would do to input signal to Primary Coil.  I found that below 2v offset you can see the offset rise.  Once you go beyond 2 volts there is a change in the analog signal.  You begin to see what looks like what I initial though was noise.  First Picture below shows analog and digital signal below 2v.  The second show it slightly above 2v.  I used curse lines to provide level reference.  The additional signal is to the left of start gate pulse.

I did check the gate size and you can see in third and fourth pictures this additional sign is not affected by frequency.  I have also found that you can expand this signal to the left quickly by increasing the offset and slow by using gain control.   Gain control does not seem to have much effect if offset is below 2v.
I also wanted to see what the output of the secondary looks like I did this using same method I did for the feedback coil.  I put scope ground on system ground and probe on either S or F sides of coil.  You can see the results in next two photos.

I had notice in one of my earlier tests that when I was looking at secondary output that there was an additional pulse (actual sine wave) in the off pulse are.  The last two phots show it below 2v offset no pulses and above 2v the small additional pulses in off period.  I believe Ronnie stated that is part of the purpose of the offset so there always some pulses going to cells.

I had expected to see the rise in the analog peak signal level.  I did not expect the addition pulses.  Though if you slow things way down to can see the pulse and signal decay very clearly.

Most interesting, happy to see you're sharing your results here Earl, it's highly appreciated :thumbsup:

I got thinking about pictures above and decided to capture Secondary output at faster rate so I could see actual wave form in side each gate pulse.   To do this I repositioned the two sides of the secondary on top of each other so the share a common center line.  So the three pictures below are all at 2khz speed but with time scale changed.  First is 100us, second 500us and third 20ms. Grain is either below 2v or slightly above for these pictures I am not sure.  I just wanted to see more detail and what it looked like as I zoomed out. I believe in the 100us we are looking at a single digital pulse.

What you do not see in any of the screen shots is the whole wave bobbin up and down with the analog wave.  Wish I was more of an expert on analog signals.  I have always with digital stuff better even have a degree in computer science as a result as well as one in electrical engineering so I can understand things just did not practice it much more of a project engineer.

I thing my next step is to put a resister load on secondary just to see what changes.

One thing I have been looking for is where you increase the voltage in steps.  None of the controls I have seen so far seem to do that.  I know Ronnie at one point said changing frequency would give you high voltages.  I have been looking for that but have not seen it so far.

In all these there is no gap in core.  I did quickly try creating an air gap but it did not seem to do anything to secondary output.  However, gap was not between secondary and primary is was out side as I have not yet created brass spacers.  Will do that test again later as I want to see what changes.  I should see some change in secondary power level but not sure I will see phase change without cokes in system.

Earl very pretty scope shops it shows the detail of your  notes well,

we can handle voltage increases in several ways manual or by trigger off k11
here are some examples

notes cells in pairs , vic transformers in pairs
it is possible to run voltage steps into the  single pair/ vic pair 2 to 10 v etc
  or /and sequential trigger 10 vic

Russ mentioned some where to use transistor , like the epg unit this diagram is not complete
it is just a guide to the right direction Stan's was smart we are lucky to have the examples replicated and global builders

Dan

Thanks Dan,  I will take a look at that.  I just had assumed it was done in the circuits I was already look at have kept waiting for it to pop up but it never has. which means it is done somewhere else.  I had decided the gain pot was going to it but it didn't which is why I asked question.

If look at the last picture above, you should see a problem the digital pulse is on the falling part of the AM wave train not on the rising part. While I had noticed the digital pulses were on the falling edge of the AM wave, I had not thought to much about it at the time as I did not have all the circuits in place.  When I did the initial tests above, I was focused on levels, but I notice that the digital pulse were on wrong side again.  I woke this morning wonder why as I had used the same signal out of K2 to generated but the digital and AM wave trains.  If you look at K11 The Digital Control Means circuit it shows the same signal going to the K3, Gate Pulse Frequency Generator, and K8, Analog Voltage Generator.

However, if you look at K8’s circuit diagram the signal indicator above the M input show it to be on the falling edge.  After checking the M and M1 signals where the same I decided to do a quick test.  I went back to K2 and inverted the M signal going to K8.

The results are shown in the two pictures below, which are taken at the input to the Primary coil.  In both pictures the analog input is in blue and digital in yellow.
 
The first picture is with the M and M1 signals being identical and digital signal shows up on the falling part of the AM wave train.

The second picture is with the M signal inverted from M1. Now the Digital signal is on rising part the AM wave train where I expected to be.

The easiest why to fix this if you are using K11 is to use the M2 output for one of the signals as it is the inverse of M and M1.

In my case I will be using an inverter on my K2 board as that is the easiest place for me to do it and use that as my input to K8.

After a lot of searching I found this signal in K8 means "step pulsing negative"

Check Secondary output after fixing timing of input to K8. Picture below is another image of the merged output of secondary coil unloaded.  Image is clearer after apply fix.  You can see the amplitude of signal growing with each pulse now as digital signal moves up the AM signal.

Not sure what the best way to capture signals on secondary and or choke coils.  Image above is using system ground on ground of probes and probe on secondary output.

I have tried using one scope channel with ground on one side and probe on other.  Did get a similar signal but with higher voltage range.  Reason I tried that is one of the diagrams I have seen show secondary with one side tied to ground but it is not clear if that is same system ground or a floating ground.

Quote from Earl on September 27th, 2020, 09:48 AM

Thanks Dan,  I will take a look at that.  I just had assumed it was done in the circuits I was already look at have kept waiting for it to pop up but it never has. which means it is done somewhere else.  I had decided the gain pot was going to it but it didn't which is why I asked question.

russ did show if you do in gradual 2 v increments it the voltage will double with 1 tube 1 vic

Ran a few more tests on output of secondary coil to better understand how to hook up scope for testing secondary side of VIC.
First, I tried using a 200-ohm resister as the load.  The digital pulse disappeared, and I could not get scope to sync.
Second tried a 200k-ohm resistor This removed the ringing on each pulse I will point it out below.  I am not sure what is correct load to use but I wanted to how signal out changed with load.  I am aware that impedance load will be different.
I also did some test on what happens when I change the position of the scopes ground.  The pictures above were all collected with the scope ground hooked to the system ground of the board.  There was some float in the signal that does not show up on screen shots.  After doing test below I double check one the screen shots above and float was there.
I did the following test using the analog signal as a reference.  I got the same results using digital signal as reference.
Test one:
CH1 – Yellow is analog input to primary, scope ground hooked to system ground
CH2 – Blue on load on secondary, GND of scope on S lead of secondary, and Probe on F lead
See first picture both signals are very stable

Test two:
Same connects but with 220k load
See second picture you can see that decay on signal in each pulse is gone but both signals are still stable

Test three:
Same setup but with scope ground for CH2 not hooked to anything
Note:  I get the same results with scope ground hooked up to system ground.
See third picture analog signal into primary is stable, but CH2 signal floats like on an AC signal.

Test four:
Same as test three setup but no load.

Comments: 
A resistive load reduces the ring in the delay pulse
Having the scope probe on system ground places a load on secondary output and reduce voltage level but does not seem to provide a stable reference for the output of the secondary at least as far as the scope is concerned. (Classic example of test equipment effecting equipment under test).

These screen shots all had the Scope GND probe on the S side of the Secondary when connected to Secondary output. If you switch it to the F side of secondary the Blue signal switches to the falling side of the AM signal.

Results is somewhat expected as the primary and secondary act like and isolation transformer where output is disconnected from the system earth ground on the primary side.  When this happens the ground source which the scope uses for timing is lost.

One of the VIC diagrams show a ground reference on the secondary side.  I believe this ground is not connected to the system ground on the primary side.  There is discussion of the “flowing” ground in some of the VIC threads which why I was doing these tests.  I wanted to understand impact of hooking up the scope.
The ground point is shown to be between the Secondary and the variable choke (side without the diode).  My question is can I continue to use my scope using this ground point or do I need a differential probe for my scope?

Aside note, I tried the 220-ohm resistor for a reason.  I want to see what it did to signal.  Nav in AM signal tread discusses using a 220-ohm resister as a load on system to maintain the flux level in core.  The high impedance is the load on the digital part of the see.  See his tread for detail.  He also states if system is tuned correct this load is not needed.

each component has capacitance so i find your tests interesting

awesome work to get this far
Ronnie said yu start in steps this would explain
THE CIRCUIT BUILDING THE SERIES CAPACITENCE AND WHY WE ADD ALL RESISTENCE TOGTHER.
it would be interesting to see scopes shot

of the incremental rise

2 volt
than 4 volt
then 6 volt
than 8 volt 
than 10 volt

Tests to Capture Results of Changing Control Settings

I decided to capture what happens when I change control setting when I have my scope across the output of the secondary coil as this seems to be the most stable configuration.

So basic setup is as follows
K2 – output M1 is 41.67hz going to K3
K3 – is set for a 5% gate at 41.67hz
K2 – output M (is the inverse of M1) is going to K8
K8 – Idle offset was set to 2.32 voltage (minimum level with not clipping)
K21 – offset to be above 2v (like idle setting this seems be minimum setting)
I have CH2 probe on the output of the secondary and for this set of tests there is no other load on secondary.  Scope GND is on F side of secondary and probe on S side of Secondary.

What I am testing this series of test if the affect of changing the idle setting on K8.  I will be looking at the both the analog input into the Primary coil and the signal from the scope across the secondary coil.

As I have only 2 channels on my scope, I will redo the level changes so I can see result on both the primary analog input and the secondary output.
Capture the affect of changing K8 Idle Offset

As start of test Idle Offset will be approximate 2.32v (minimum setting in my system to get clean analog signal).
CH1 – Yellow is the output of K8, analog sign with offset (approx. 2v)
CH2- Blue is the scope probe across the Secondary Coil output (no load)
The first picture is with K8 set to the minimum idle setting approximate 2.32v
Note:  Vpp(2) value is 13.2V

Raise the Vmax(1) level to approx. 3V
Notice:  The output of the secondary voltage goes down Vpp(2) is not approx. 10 volts. I had seen this earlier when I was looking at the Primary inputs. 

Repeat this test but with CH1 scope on the Analog Input to the Primary Coil
First the Minimum Offset level
CH2-Blue on output of Secondary
CH1-Yellow is not on Analog input to Primary Coil
K8 setting are approx. the same as start of previous test
Notice both Vmax(1) and Vpp(2) will change

Capture the outputs with K8 Vmax about 3v
Notice that both Vmax (1) and Vpp(2) have dropped.  I expect them to be in sync and they are I can see them changing together when I change the idle offset value on K8.  Now I do not have a theory of why it works this way.  I had expected to see the values go up.  But this is the reason I am doing these test I want to know what will happen when I change a setting.

I plan on repeating these test but with changing the offset and gain on K9. One thing I have learned is you need to be careful and make sure you have the minimum values see correctly or system does not function the way you expect.  Get they too low and you signal disappears.  Happen to me several times when I turn wrong knob.

I was looking ad differential probes last night and found I was close in seeing what the actual signal looks like out of secondary.  Turns out you can see what a differential probe will show you if you use 2 probes across the item you are measuring with both probes grounds on system ground.  Then if you use Math function A-B it will show you what a differential problem would.

So here are two screen shots showing unloaded secondary output and last one with 220K load

The first shows CH1, CH2 and the Math Function A-B where A is CH1 and B is CH2.

The second shows just the Math function with scale changed. Turns out you can turn off the display of the scope channels and Math function still works.  This is really what I was trying see as it gives you the real voltage of the output.  Bright spot on scope is light behind me forgot to block it.

Just to be complete I in last photo I added 220K load to secondary note voltage drop.