Cap Dump Circuit

[BroMikey]

Level shifter for Shanjaq

Why an opto and not a level shifter? For so long as the gate voltage is between 0 and 18v the drain-source resistance is high, which means the power dissipation is occurring in the switch tending toward damage. Optos are slow, level shifters are as fast as a small-signal transistor.

Hi Shanjaq

Is this your circuit? Let me know if your circuit works better or how to use it.



Mike

[BroMikey]

I am listening

Why an opto and not a level shifter? For so long as the gate voltage is between 0 and 18v the drain-source resistance is high, which means the power dissipation is occurring in the switch tending toward damage. Optos are slow, level shifters are as fast as a small-signal transistor.

Hello Shanjag

I am open to a circuit. Okay 555 timer to level shifter. Humm

let me see your example. There are so many possibilities. All I ask is to get me within range of this idea. I need a circuit diagram. Beyond a working general idea of what you are thinking about is just an input that diverts our attention out into space.

Show us your idea and we can consider the thought better.

Thank you for your kind suggestion.

Mike

[Shanjaq]

Why an opto and not a level shifter? For so long as the gate voltage is between 0 and 18v the drain-source resistance is high, which means the power dissipation is occurring in the switch tending toward damage. Optos are slow, level shifters are as fast as a small-signal transistor.

[BroMikey]

Resistors added

Maybe add resistors to protect the base from over voltages.



If anyone thinks this looks right let me know.

Mike

[BroMikey]

Diagram connections

The 555 can be used as a one shot or as a PWM which makes it possible to do a lot of things that you may be interested in. For example, use one to control the overall speed of your pulses and then use two more to control the length of on time for your charge and dump pulses. You may need to invert the polarity of the signal to the reset pin of the 555. You can use a simple transistor inverter for that. With appropriate pots attached you can control every important parameter in your setup. I have enjoyed following this thread so far, Mike. Thanks for your original post and the valuable conversation.

@ Wayne

Thanks, glad you are here.

This is one possible connection



Maybe I should have gone to source on the negative?

Mike

[wayne.ct]

Many uses for the 555

The 555 can be used as a one shot or as a PWM which makes it possible to do a lot of things that you may be interested in. For example, use one to control the overall speed of your pulses and then use two more to control the length of on time for your charge and dump pulses. You may need to invert the polarity of the signal to the reset pin of the 555. You can use a simple transistor inverter for that. With appropriate pots attached you can control every important parameter in your setup. I have enjoyed following this thread so far, Mike. Thanks for your original post and the valuable conversation.

[BroMikey]

GenWave

Here is a diagram of how my Bedini energizer in GENMODE fills caps. It self regulates to the load and the wave will falter and stall briefly under a direct short condition, rather than burn out components.

Here is the way it looks on the scope when filling up my capacitor bank.



As the caps fill the wave narrows and rises in voltage til dumping comes.

Then the process is repeated. No extra resistance in the circuit is used, so the circuit is energy wise.

Mike

[BroMikey]

How to connect Complementary Pair

Here is a diagram with 2 separate circuits in it. Please download a copy to your desktop and draw lines to connect the two for a general idea of how it basically could be done.

Here are the two circuits. Then upload your connection alteration so we can see.



Thank you for your consideration.

I will be back soon with complementary diagrams but the problem is that most of the circuits on the web all center around driving a motor.

Mike

[BroMikey]

connections

Humm I will have to think how to hook my 555 timer circuit up to the pair of transistors.





Anyone knows let see it.

Mike

[BroMikey]

Complementary NPN + PNP

Yeah using the one signal with complimentary transistors can work as well, and with this kind of setup might well be the simplest.

I'll make a drawing to show what I mean in general first. I'm no expert circuit designer.

..

Something basically like this ? Either the caps are charging or the caps are dumping, turn on the switching before allowing the caps to charge.

It's not exactly how I would do it, I think I would want to ensure there was "dead time" between cap charge and cap dump.
As well as use pull down/pull up resistors to make sure of a steady on or off state with the switches without the 555 powered.

Dead time between switching ensures both switches are not on a bit at the
same time which would allow what you don't want. And can be achieved with a flip flop if the duty of the signal generator pulses can be varied.

The other chips like the SG3525 output two signals out of phase and the duty can be varied on both with one adjustment, but they can be a bit complicated I agree.

..

P.S. A high inductance coil with low resistance between the supply batteries positive and the capacitors positive would also be a good idea, this slows down the current charging the caps and the coil will discharge into the caps.
Or maybe between the caps and the charge battery might be better.

Actually, maybe if you just use a biggish coil rather than a resistor it might work with the single switch.

..

Super Awesome simple Farmhand

Great for us beginners Now going forward with the idea. First thing everyone needs to hear like you pointed out Farmhand is that our discussion does not eliminate the resistor.

The resistor or resistors must always be there to slow down the charging of the capacitor bank and also to sort of keep and even electrical pressure on the front and backside of our devices or Mosfet's.

So our discussion overall centers around improving efficiency of the circuit.

Always remember when a circuit is of a higher efficiency that part of the power that was wasted before is now used to charge the battery but there will always be a loss.

so with these losses in mind, where is our free energy??

Well let's just call it extra energy because like some of the guys have stated that these surges that hit a battery will cause changes and unknown electrical activity not associated with 100 year old charging methods.

So here we go, PNP and NPN used to turn on and off the run battery during dumping, yet keep in mind always that the resistor need to be placed around the circuit to save it's life from burn up.

If I remember correctly from memory there is a circuit showing a .05 ohm resistor I think must be a wire wound or coil in a patent by JOHN BEDINI.

Note the red circles showing the high watt resistors with a very low ohm value. These resistor values and placement in this PNP + NPN complementary arrangement should teach us something.



So using the PNP + NPN gives us two devices to resistor but we should be able to trip them both one out of step with the other using the ONE timer.

Beyond that we could go to the subject I really want to focus on and THAT is GENERATOR MODE.

Generator mode could be used instead to limit inrush flows upon dumping which it important. With gen-mode the waveform will momentarily be disrupted to a few microsecond while the dump occurs and automatically self regulates itself supplying any voltage needed.

What should be noted most of all is that the power input is limited with large single surges of huge amounts of power. Other circuits like the energy pumping above decrease the size of the package as well as increasing the power handling.

It becomes a trade off. Charging should start out with more current handling and go to less and less till the battery reaches full and this can be done any number of ways.

In my case RIGHT NOW as we speak I am using 18 amp pulses to charge a 880ah battery. These batteries are the size of a golf cart. So normally a 50 amp continuous direct currents are sent to these for 20 hrs as it boils the batteries, ruins them in a few months.

Think about it with only 3 devices so far (3 MOSFETS) sending a tiny impulse to these very large batteries, I am able to bring them both up to 15.2vdc settling at 13.4vdc for an hour.

Last night I ran a small AC unit that pulled 110 amps off the battery for a short time and I learned that my inverter does not work right for inductive loads. However the TV and lights and PC's, fans etc ran all night pulling around 50 amps, well til bedtime then amp draw went to 25 amps coming off these batteries. These batteries have been conditioned for weeks and already exhibit a greater capacity than the original factory spec's.

This is only one battery. After letting it set for an hour the battery voltage showed 12.50vdc.

Mike

[Farmhand]

Yeah using the one signal with complimentary transistors can work as well, and with this kind of setup might well be the simplest.

I'll make a drawing to show what I mean in general first. I'm no expert circuit designer.

..

Something basically like this ? Either the caps are charging or the caps are dumping, turn on the switching before allowing the caps to charge.

It's not exactly how I would do it, I think I would want to ensure there was "dead time" between cap charge and cap dump.
As well as use pull down/pull up resistors to make sure of a steady on or off state with the switches without the 555 powered.

Dead time between switching ensures both switches are not on a bit at the
same time which would allow what you don't want. And can be achieved with a flip flop if the duty of the signal generator pulses can be varied.

The other chips like the SG3525 output two signals out of phase and the duty can be varied on both with one adjustment, but they can be a bit complicated I agree.

..

P.S. A high inductance coil with low resistance between the supply batteries positive and the capacitors positive would also be a good idea, this slows down the current charging the caps and the coil will discharge into the caps.
Or maybe between the caps and the charge battery might be better.

Actually, maybe if you just use a biggish coil rather than a resistor it might work with the single switch.

..

[BroMikey]

Jim Dandy Circuits.

Have you calculated how much energy is dissipated by the resistor.

Ohm's Law with Calculator

To get 2 amps flowing from 12 volts potential difference would require 6 Ohms
and result in 24 Watts of power dissipated in the resistor itself. Which is wasted
unless you desire the heat generation.

This is why with medium to high powers resistors are not generally considered
for current limiting. At least not by me. There are other ways to disconnect the
supply while dumping. But some electronics "trickery" is required. The use of
an IC chip like a SG3523 or an SG3525 (my preference) or a CD4047 (simplest)
can help a lot. I think the CD4047 can go to the low frequencies you want.

I'll try to make a drawing of the simplest set up I can, for the sake of others as well.

A two stage or two phase arrangement will work.

First phase a low side switch connects the supply to the caps then disconnects,
2nd phase another low side switch connects the charge battery to the capacitors then disconnects.
repeat at the desired frequency

..

Thanks Again FARMHAND

Let me think about that one Sounds like a winner.

Looking forward to seeing a simple version for all. Won't this be great?

The voltage drop across my resistor is 1/4th the total power flowing. In my case I was using 42vdc at the capacitor bank discharge. The supply is 55vdc and the drop across my resistor is 12vdc now at 2 amps. So 12 X 2 =24 watts but the cap bank is receiving 42vdc at 2 amps or 42 X 2 = 84 watts

A 555 timer is employed already so why not use the same circuit to do a flip flop or muiltvib or whatever folks call it when a 555 timer does one thing on the up swing and another on the down swing? What is that function for 555 timer?

Hang on I will be back. A 555 timer back in the day was considered a very complex, state of the art device with many modes of operation. The beginners like the timers.

Mike

[Farmhand]

Have you calculated how much energy is dissipated by the resistor.

Ohm's Law with Calculator

To get 2 amps flowing from 12 volts potential difference would require 6 Ohms
and result in 24 Watts of power dissipated in the resistor itself. Which is wasted
unless you desire the heat generation.

This is why with medium to high powers resistors are not generally considered
for current limiting. At least not by me. There are other ways to disconnect the
supply while dumping. But some electronics "trickery" is required. The use of
an IC chip like a SG3523 or an SG3525 (my preference) or a CD4047 (simplest)
can help a lot. I think the CD4047 can go to the low frequencies you want.

I'll try to make a drawing of the simplest set up I can, for the sake of others as well.

A two stage or two phase arrangement will work.

First phase a low side switch connects the supply to the caps then disconnects,
2nd phase another low side switch connects the charge battery to the capacitors then disconnects.
repeat at the desired frequency

..

[BroMikey]

Cap dumpers

Hello experimenters

Here is some very important information for each of you aspiring to do a dump circuit that will operate properly. I have learned this on my own though I am sure someone must have shown this before.

The way I learned this was by first using an energizer or forced oscillator that I connected to a cap dump switch. The timer circuit and switch send power in the form of a pulse to the charge battery.

The circuit below does not employ and oscillator so it become necessary to add a resistor in the line of the capacitor bank charging circuit side from the run batteries.

Study the page. If the resistor is not present then both meters will show a pulse of about the same 8 amp pulse and fry your switch and will never dump down to a low enough voltage to be effective.

What you want is a run battery that charges the capacitor bank up at about 2 amps per second so when the switch is thrown an 8 amp pulse can be discharged in a few microseconds.

If you think about this diagram and experiment you will see that without the resistance to limit RC charging times you will not only damage components but never get a true pulse as the supply will never stop.

Here is the diagram.



I hope this helps you guys who are beginning and don't want a burned out circuits to start out your learning process.

Mike

[BroMikey]

Closing the loop

Hi Mike, I'm not sure if this really applies to your thread , kind of I guess but I don't have a circut for the dump , just manual , eventually mechanical.
The one thing I've noticed when trying to dump into the source battery the voltage will jump but then settle to a lower value?
If I dump to a secondary battery it jumps then settles but never to a lower value and eventually charging. So is that the reason for disconnecting supply before dumping into it?
Hi Matt in that video of the magnet rail, I'm sure you exp. extensively did you ever get anywhere with it? I was thinking it could be used as an assited kicker in a multitude of exp. If I had all the same magnets I would try myself.
Sorry not much to do about electronics, just looking.
artv

Hello Shylo

The dumping to a source battery is closing the loop and now you get into many more facts and discussions. It depends on so many things like "ARE YOU USING A BEDINI OSC"??? If so sulfation is at a minimum.

ARE YOU USING AN INVERTER?

You will need to post the setup of how you are getting source battery energy to first transfer into a secondary and then back around again. So you could say that as the spikes come around or if you are using genmode warm currents the same conditioning is on going. he only true test would be to measure the amount in THAT battery as it probably grows larger.

So let's summarize. Pulsing 1 battery to another then back around must be a constant process for days to see where things are going and to measure all of the joules coming out of each battery. Big time consumer. When You are finished you will find you got extra energy yes.

You might even scale up so your batteries are as big as a school bus and end up with enough left over to run part of your house on.

I will be showing Bedini's GENMODE on the scope soon and how it looks when the dump comes.

Stay tuned.

Mike