A small shipment of magnet wire came in the other day and so I finally got to wind up a 1,000 turn coil. I've been reduced to fabricating my own spools from PVC pipe and other odd pieces of scrap and scratching my head trying to figure out how to keep flanges of the spools from falling off once too many turns are on it. I'm still waiting for the 11 lb. spool...

Since I didn't have any batteries hanging off of the diode, I figured this thread would be appropriate to post some more preliminary results. I apologize for the paucity of hard data, but I just don't have enough meters to do the job. At any rate, starting the rotor with the 1,000 turn coil is much easier. Running 12V, the current draw consistently went to 230 mA while when running 6V, the current draw was consistently 90 mA (margin of error is +/- 10 mA). I did test the 6-magnet rotor with the new coil at 12V and it drew a steady 210 mA (didn't check 6V).

(slightly-offtopic)I did check to see if the rotor RPM would drop with a load and it did as I've seen it do before.(/slightly-offtopic) It's interesting that the 12V battery draws more than twice the current of the 6V battery with the same setup. I guess that means that the resistance I have set up on the trigger side (680 ohms, 'natch) is more closely matched (or 'tuned') to the 6V battery than to the 12V. The resistor isn't soldered in yet, so this calls for some experimentation. One thing I notice about John Bedini's circuits is that there are no pots in any of them. Apparently he knows his coils/circuits well enough to choose an appropriate resistance and leave it at that.

One other item of note is that the current consumption seems to only go up no matter what voltage I put on it. Which of course makes me wonder if my setup is correct, since it's supposed to speed up and then have the current draw go down. But then again, perhaps that effect can't and/or doesn't occur in a single coil setup--I'm eager to get the multi-coil going. It also could be that I have lousy bearings and that the motor is trying to overcome that but just can't.

In answer to your question, Aaron, yes, I have seen John's picture of the magnetic fields around the rotor. It's funny, I always assumed those spokes were north fields. It sheds a whole new light on things to see that those are south fields! Yes, I tried magnets in those spaces and I have to tell you, it was a little freaky to see the north face of a free magnet stick in between two rotor magnets which, as you know, are north facing out! John was right when he said this machine was deceptively simple.