Quote:
Originally Posted by Jetijs
waterhouse - very nice 
I can't get my light bulbs to shine that bright. What id the amp draw from your primary battery?
I tried out three different relays and had the same results with all of them. The oscillations start at about 5-7V and the amp draw at this voltage is about 4-6A. If I increase the input voltage, the amp draw increases dramatically up to 10A an then the contacts start to stick together. I tried different induction coil and various condenser capacities with almost the same results. Also I tried to disconnect the charging battery on the fly to see if there is any difference in the light intensity - there was not, also the amp draw stayed about the same. Can't figure out how you guys are getting just 1A at 12v. I can get 1A current draw at about 3.5v. I also tried different light bulbs, some of them are working better, some worse, but I still can't get even a half of the normal brightness of these bulbs. Any ideas? |
Peter made an excellent choice in the relay, its a sealed relay so it doesnt have any oxygen flow through it, so it doesnt get hot. The relays make all the difference. Some of my relays worked better and like you some of my relays were worse. I wish i knew what exactly about the relay makes it so special it would make it easier to better pin-point what to look for. the ice cube relay worked the best, it was an obsolete radio shack design and it had a 160 ohm coil and i think it was like 50 ma. And it only had a current draw of at first 400 ma with great brightness but i discovered that not only was the relay old but the clip lead i used coming off the hv tower to the bulb, had only a few starnds of wire making contact so it was adding resistance. I guess the right resistance
Peter & I freaked out at the ultra low current draw with such good brightness, but then it started to become intermittent operation and i tracked it down to that clip lead, so when i put a new clip lead it went up to about 700ma and that was also with a older relay. I tried 3 different old relays they were the old tv5 out of an old sylvania tv, and they has about 140 ohm coil. And they worked well also. So i would look at the ohm values of the relays that you are using and see if they fall between 100 to 200 ohm. that seems to be a good match for the particular coil we used. But the 500 ohm relay that Peter picked out worked well also. Good luck
