Big Joule Theif

[Vaporizer]

Hi all,

TEC, it seems the JT running alone ma's load can be set by many different means. The type of transistor, base resistor value and I'm guessing the # & gauge of primary winds/resistance. In this link Jule Thief Xee has a schematic and a chart that may help you. Looks like some can run as low as 3.4ma at idle, but also look at the output capability.

Nick, As far a over winding the 1st toroid layer..... I haven't done enough to really answer that. Most wind on a single layer unless the secondary needs more room. The "E" cores are wound on a plastic bobbin and used in many circuits. They are are all wound on a single form over top each other just as the ferrite rods are in many examples. I'm fairly sure it would be better if a specific wind was against the core, but it may make little difference. That Fuji transformer I refer to has 1750 turns on the output coil. Very fine wire 45ga? But looking at it, the primary or trigger coil is the outer wrap over it all and it seems very efficient.

cikljamas, Welcome from another noob here. lol Nothing like feeling 2yrs behind and abt 10,000 post to read huh? The thread above abt 1/2 way down the page has a post that shows what i think you are looking for by Gadgetmall. It seem to have the right title. There are 3 of the same circuits posted on that page. The one with the red line connecting the 2 tank circuits to the base is the correct one from what I've read. Also look at that transistor. You'll need to see if it can handle the load you are describing. Lidmotor used a 3" toroid for the Jennas light in the vid.

Hope this helps.

[cikljamas]

Hi guys !

This is very interesting thread ! It is a pity that i join you so late,
but there is always fist step for any journy, is it not ?

I made few days ago my first little JT, and it is nice little device,
then day before yesterday i made my first big JT (Slayer007s one)
and i am very impressed with efficiency of this device for charging
batteries purpose, for example today i used 4 coil JT to test
efficiency in range of about 1 A, and result was : 900 mA input,
500 mA output...So is it good result for Slayers JT or average one,
or maybe even worse than average one ?

Six hours ago i started to make this JT with 555 timer :

http://www.energeticforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=7097&stc=1&d=1291092409

but it seems that i can not achieve good output result with my little one
toroid that i thought i could use instead 2 inches one that LIDMOTOR
showed in his youtube presentation...

Could anyone suggest me what kind of substitution for that 2 inches toroid
i could use for that project ?

Sucahyo suggested me to make JEANNAs JT, does anyone know something
about that stuff or has diagram of JEANNAs JT ?

Thanks for help in advance !

Rgds !

[Vaporizer]

Hi all,

Tec, sorry to hear abt the headaches. I seldom ever have a headache, but I have had times where I had migraines for a period and then they would just go away for months or a couple yrs. They can deff keep you down. Hope yours ends soon! I've seen many negative comments from supposedly "learned" ppl on vids posted. Using words like "impossible, never, can't" are big statements of a closed mind IMHO. Those are easily quelled by looking at all the advances since 1900. Look what we have now and if asked in 1900 everyone would have used and did use those words. The world belongs to dreamers.

Nick, I gave your question thought abt the the LED's comparison primary vs secondary. This can be a simple test. Since you asked abt being the same brightness, that can be subjective as what the eye can see and possibly skewed by what you want it to be. This test would be cheap, easy and give you a true valid comparison. If you have a small solar cell, a .5-3v one would be fine. All you need to do is set the LEDs to directly hit the solar cell(all touching the face of the cell), say in a dark room. Adjust for max brightness, reading the voltage of the solar cell, and then measure the ma draw.
Next, repeat with them using a secondary winding. It could be done in a light tight box as long as the solar cell is reading zero with the circuit off. Comparing the 2 sets of numbers should show you immediately which is more efficient.
As far as the rest of you last post, a lot depends on what you want as a final outcome. This will determine how or what is the best setup to meet your expectations IMHO. I find myself still thinking abt this as if I want this, what is the best way to achieve it, but should I "trade this off for that" kinda thing. If one were to get away from using an AA, I saw a D size rechargeable for $4 ea 1.25v NiMH that are rated @ 10,000ma! 10A in a single battery that is rechargeable. Talk abt long run times.
50 LEDs is not shabby for a few days on a single AA! Nice.

sisqocracker, I too was schooled in electronics and worked many yrs designing equipment/circuitry for needed applications ignoring or suppressing what we are using now. It's the norm mind set ppl are taught. Most just cannot seem to break or deviate from that train of thought. I was know for being "out of the box" even then. If someone were to ask me if I believe in unity or over unity, my 1st impression is no if I answer honestly, but I cannot rule it out as an absolute. That doesn't deter me from my new passion for super efficient usage.

Well, we lost power last night for abt 7hrs. Got a chance to test my Fuji 9w JT. It did well. I don't have it packaged up yet, but here are some pics. I still think it can be improved, but I can do that and have it decent looking for now. I measured the transformer and it is 5/16" all directions.....amazing. This is why I wonder so much on what a 2 3/8"'s potential is.

Ok, it only has 5 components and the gutted 9w "U". It's setup to use 1 or 2 AA's for testing. I blew the original transistor with 2.50v(heat). This pic is in a fully lit room.


The camera is compensating for the brightness. It's not that bright, but you can read by it easily and it does make a shadow. Notice the red LED isn't lit on 1.25v.


Now 2.5v....much better. Again the camera is compensating some, but now its much better and the LED is lit.


Lastly, same shot with full room lighting for reference. 20hrs isn't bad IMHO. I have some other ideas for changes including a couple solar cells behind it for refeed. @ 2.5v, I can't take advantage of the 555 I mentioned.....yet.

[NickZ]

@V and All:
400 leds from one AA is impresive, but only if it lasts longer than an hour, or minutes.
I can light 50 leds off of one AA on the C and E rails, for a couple of days. The way that my 76, 76 turn one inch toroid coil, TIP3055 transistor combo works, if I use a 1 k resistor on the base, I can't even light the leds, as they blick off from Too Much input. Unless the single run battery's charge is around 1 volt or less (dead battery).
I found that out after I burnt the pot, and have not found a replacement yet. So, that Jtc does have a good strong primary circuit, with higher current. My question is: is it better try to wind a secondary coil over on the outside of the existing primary, (as it already goes all the way around the coil). Or should I remove some turns and only make the secondary over the part where the bare core is exposed? Looks like the secondary over the bare core is the way to go, but... any ideas? And, also any opinions on the ratio of leds that should be placed in series, as well as also in parallel, to obtain the most amount of light from a single AA battery source. Like 7 in series, and 5 in parallel...
If a Jtc with 100 leds puts out the same amount of light intensity, as 50 leds do, there is no advange in using more bulbs. So, what's the best Bang for the Buck, (Leds wise), when using small AAs. Ideas...?

@V: What a great deal on the 2 3/8 inch toroids. That helps to makes each Jtc more cost effective.
I wonder what a 10 watt Led bulb would do, on one of your big Jt coils. I guess we'll just have to wait and see...

[sisqocracker]

@ Vaporizer

I was taught, by the military none the less; about all sorts of circuits, and power, and batteries, etc. (was qualified to work on Cobras and Apaches armament systems) And there were conversations that came up about "power spikes". They were there when powering off and powering on, and they were evil. They were "transient" power spikes (from chokes actually, thinking back on it now). They were destroying your circuit, so you had to do things in your circuit to squelch them. I think of this every time I work on a Bedini or JT circuit now. I always had this looming thought in the back of my mind back then... why not use that? Surely you could switch it, and use it....

so here we are... :-)

I'm loving that we're doing this work... hating that it has been suppressed for about 100 years.

Take care yall.

Thanks,
Coop

[Tectalabyss]

Dont worry about the long posts

@ Nick and all,
That's a big question I can't answer yet. I'm not sure you can run 50 off the E-C junction. The LED can appear as bright as "normal" without it's required full stated current. There is a point where adding more current makes it no brighter which is why the Base is tweakable. The JT takes a low voltage that won't light an LED and rings it up through the toriod to 30+ volts on the primary side and many hundreds of volts on the secondary. Jenna stated 7v on the secondary per LED. It appears that the higher voltage is being used to "trigger" the potential to light the LED and then comes the fun. You adjust the resistor of the JT transistor Base to charge the toroid till you get the brightness you desire. This will increase the current load of the circuit. That's where the 555 is so beneficial. It takes time for the toroid to charge and collapse magnetically. So, rather than have the LED's on the primary side constantly loading the battery, its actually flashing the LED's on the secondary faster than the eye can see. But, it only has to be "on" abt 15-20% of the time. Not much different than regular lights in your house. They cycle 60 times a second and you never see it. The low power 555 does require 3v min to work so 2 AA are needed. I'm pretty sure I have a schematic saved that adds a second transistor to pulse the JT Base so a single AA can still be used.

This is where the ratio of windings, the wire size and core size come to play. The scope pics show a huge spike on the primary & secondary as the magnetic field collapses. A standard meter will not catch it as its to fast. Normal teachings say when you cross a transformer stepping voltage up, the current is reduced. You can increase current by stepping the voltage down just as well. The JT is utilizing ignored things that happen which traditional thought felt non-useful or not worthy of notice. So, it was wasted as an "excepted loss".........till now.

This is where the JT, Bedini and its associated add-ons intrigue me so much. They are squeaking everything possible, so far, from what was once thought useless making it now useful. My having a background in the field actually makes me no better than anyone else building these. It was never taught. It may give me a better understanding of what is happening, but I'm as much as a neophyte as others are here. This is all out of the box thinking and I love it. A person with no electronics background isn't bound by the rules that were forced to learn as "the absolute law". Many new discoveries are made by people with no background because they haven't been mentally handcuffed.

This is where reading the entire threads means so much to me and there are so many. You see the start, improvements, failures and growth. You'll also see trends like I described of what leads to better outcomes. They are better but not necessarily the final best as everyone is using materials available many times. When you can make such things from scrap others throw away, all the better.

Thanks for the comment on the toroids, all were bought from ebay. The 10 2 3/8" cost me $2ea after shipping. Not a bad score. I need to contact the seller to see if I can get a part number or try to find the material type. My guess is they are "J"s. If I get something going well, I now know I can do much better by just repeating it with a "W" core and less wire. The Fuji camera transformer is a JT circuit. It's less than 1/2"sq "E" shaped core. Look what it can do and read the comment below the vid. 400 leds from an AA! YouTube - Modified Fuji Circuit Joule Thief circuit lighting 40 watt tube with AA battery
Makes me wonder what can be done with a Goldmine or 2 3/8" core!

My apologies to all for the long posts. It's just my passion showing through. I will try to do better.

Hello Vaporizer and All.
I am getting behind.Headaches are bad this week sorry.I hope to have a better meter sometime in the next few weeks. This is how my amps read with 20 leds 5mm 0.04 when removed 0.03 amps so I am guessing the JT is using 0.03 amps ? does this sound about right.And I have a bigger toroid to try out if my stupid head will leave me alone I agree with you about (" The Absolute law ") I've had people to get mad over me saying It is not written in stone just to find out I was right a year later. And don't worry about the long post's I enjoy reading a well written paper,and it give's my mind a work out Thanks for sharing Tec

[Vaporizer]

@ Nick and all,
That's a big question I can't answer yet. I'm not sure you can run 50 off the E-C junction. The LED can appear as bright as "normal" without it's required full stated current. There is a point where adding more current makes it no brighter which is why the Base is tweakable. The JT takes a low voltage that won't light an LED and rings it up through the toriod to 30+ volts on the primary side and many hundreds of volts on the secondary. Jenna stated 7v on the secondary per LED. It appears that the higher voltage is being used to "trigger" the potential to light the LED and then comes the fun. You adjust the resistor of the JT transistor Base to charge the toroid till you get the brightness you desire. This will increase the current load of the circuit. That's where the 555 is so beneficial. It takes time for the toroid to charge and collapse magnetically. So, rather than have the LED's on the primary side constantly loading the battery, its actually flashing the LED's on the secondary faster than the eye can see. But, it only has to be "on" abt 15-20% of the time. Not much different than regular lights in your house. They cycle 60 times a second and you never see it. The low power 555 does require 3v min to work so 2 AA are needed. I'm pretty sure I have a schematic saved that adds a second transistor to pulse the JT Base so a single AA can still be used.

This is where the ratio of windings, the wire size and core size come to play. The scope pics show a huge spike on the primary & secondary as the magnetic field collapses. A standard meter will not catch it as its to fast. Normal teachings say when you cross a transformer stepping voltage up, the current is reduced. You can increase current by stepping the voltage down just as well. The JT is utilizing ignored things that happen which traditional thought felt non-useful or not worthy of notice. So, it was wasted as an "excepted loss".........till now.

This is where the JT, Bedini and its associated add-ons intrigue me so much. They are squeaking everything possible, so far, from what was once thought useless making it now useful. My having a background in the field actually makes me no better than anyone else building these. It was never taught. It may give me a better understanding of what is happening, but I'm as much as a neophyte as others are here. This is all out of the box thinking and I love it. A person with no electronics background isn't bound by the rules that were forced to learn as "the absolute law". Many new discoveries are made by people with no background because they haven't been mentally handcuffed.

This is where reading the entire threads means so much to me and there are so many. You see the start, improvements, failures and growth. You'll also see trends like I described of what leads to better outcomes. They are better but not necessarily the final best as everyone is using materials available many times. When you can make such things from scrap others throw away, all the better.

Thanks for the comment on the toroids, all were bought from ebay. The 10 2 3/8" cost me $2ea after shipping. Not a bad score. I need to contact the seller to see if I can get a part number or try to find the material type. My guess is they are "J"s. If I get something going well, I now know I can do much better by just repeating it with a "W" core and less wire. The Fuji camera transformer is a JT circuit. It's less than 1/2"sq "E" shaped core. Look what it can do and read the comment below the vid. 400 leds from an AA! YouTube - Modified Fuji Circuit Joule Thief circuit lighting 40 watt tube with AA battery
Makes me wonder what can be done with a Goldmine or 2 3/8" core!

My apologies to all for the long posts. It's just my passion showing through. I will try to do better.

[NickZ]

Vaporizer and All:
Sounds like you've done your home work on the Jtc.
Theoretically then, if you were to use let say 50 leds, at the C and E, and then tried the same 50 leds, at the secondary, both times using a brand new AA battery. Which set up would last longer, and put out the most amount of light intensity? I'm sure this type of test has already been done, even though each Jtc is a bit different and all, but there should be a general answer. Question is, does the secondary coil's output provide for a more Economical Use on the batteries duty cycle? It would seam so... or, is it just using up the AA battery's charge faster while it's lighting the bulbs.
It seams like Tec had some good results, I've never heard of anybody getting two weeks run time on any Jtc running on an AA battery.
@V: Your coils look super nice, you had some luck finding them. Hope they work as good as they look.
NZ

[Vaporizer]

@ Tectalabyss,
I missed the pics! Sorry. Looks pretty good.
I had an order set to go to the "Goldmine" , ate dinner, and it all went away!
I had a breadboard on it like yours. I have 1 and can't find it. I'm sure after 2 weeks of looking it will show up 10 seconds after I hit the order button.
I had a 6v solar panel on it so I can series it with my other for 12v.

We lose or electricity during the winter too like Nick. 2-3 days isn't uncommon and one bad ice storm left us 7 days with no electricity. Over the yrs I've made things to get by and even have a few magneto lights, one with an emergency weather radio in it. Be nice to have some nice AA's doing some "safe" work.
I'll get a pic of my Fuji 9w "U". It's abt 1/2 of what I'd like in brightness. It's done well over 10hrs on a single AA. Numbers say it should do 20hrs as is. I didn't charge the battery before the test. I'd dance to have it 10hrs at 2x the brightness.

[Vaporizer]

!st one done

Ok, I took the one from the previous pic, painted it, and here it is next to a "raw" one. Mucho better. Now I can do the other 9.
Wife is picking me up an assortment of lights tomorrow....I hope.
I'm hoping they have one of the Lights of America brand LED one. They seem to fair well. A friend is supposed to send me a few of the Cree big LED's from flashlights he's modded. 230 Lumens ea............

@ Nick,
In all honesty Nick, I did read complete threads here, at OU and saved many of the vids, pics , schematics and such. I made notes on the windings and wire gauges too. It's interesting to see where it all started and the improvements as time went by.
Most original JT's were a 1:1 wind(10 turns each side) with the LED in the E-C to show it worked and it ate the spike. The problem is as they added more at that connection point, E-C, it was working the transistor hard and was still directly on the source battery current, aided by the ring backs potential to allow it to light.
With the isolated secondary(some call tertiary or pickup) wind running the LED's, they are running 130 of them bright on a Christmas tree with a AA. I can't see that ever happening on the E-C junction.
A couple other things changed too during the evolution. The trigger winding went to 3 turns of a heavier gauge, the primary went to at least 9 turns for a 3:1 increase, then the secondary went to 350 turns of a finer gauge. Power is power and I've never seen a CFL lit from the E-C junction. They also added a 555 pulse timer that keeps the circuit "on" only 15% of the time. That's just fast enough to trigger the Base without seeing the light flicker. An 85% savings in current usage anyway you look at it giving much longer run times. The low power 555 draws 130 or 180ua. Yes ua. Abt 2 tenths of 1 ma. Well worth adding in IMHO.
Next came the permeability of the ferrite material. Most were using the "J" type but got varying sometimes strange results. Its value is 5000. Someone tried a type "W" material and the secondary winds dropped to abt 100 for the same results. The "W's" value is 10000. There is a type "H", but they are hard to find and expensive. They are rated at 15000 in permeability.

Oh..sorry.....here's the pic of it ready to wind.



All JT's still have little differences with each one you build. Like most, I bought parts as I read to make them only to find out 5 pages later before my order came in they found something better. Like transistors that will still trigger @ .2-3v, not .6-.8v. A learning experience to say the least, but a badge that most earn. I saw a few posts asking for the "best circuit". Usually from a new member. Most seemed unanswered as to say "build it and learn" or "at least read what we have posted for you".

[NickZ]

@ Vaporizer:
WOW!!! That nice orange coil is what we need lighting a big Christmas tree. You should go into the big toroids resale bussiness, we could bid for them...

[NickZ]

@ Tec and All:
Your coil looks great, and from the report of the duty cycle test it sounds like it really can put out some juice, while drawing very littlle from the battery.
One of my Jtc is a one inch toroid with 76, 76 turns of 26 gauge magnet wire, and uses a Tip3055. I notice that it's led's light intensity and heat are very dependent on the resistor choice, and pot setting, among the other components. It is one of the more powerfull and heat resistant transistors are far as the output it can produce, but not that economical to run when given full throttle. If using a solar panel, it wouldn't matter.
I'm still don't know about the secondary being more economical to use for leds lights than the E - C rail output. But from the sound of your tests, you've done alot with it.
More test are neccessary...
NZ

[Tectalabyss]

Mil amp draw

@ Tectalabyss,
Are your 10mm like these?
50p 10mm SUPER BRIGHT WHITE LED LAMP 140Kmcd FREE SHIP - eBay (item 370279921071 end time Dec-18-10 21:21:23 PST)

I would be more inclined to believe 200ma at that output. I'm going to buy some brighter than my 5mm 12000mcd's. They are rated @ 20-30ma, but a few yrs old.
Stacking 5 up for 700,000mcd expecting 100ma is way diff than if they are actually 200ma making it 1A ! Current draw from the high voltage of the secondary is strange to say the least with JT's & LEDs.
Any current draw numbers of what you do have would be appreciated.
Something like the type( size & rated output), current draw bright wit 1, 5, 10 in parallel would be great if not to much trouble.

The 8mm 1w @300ma........I'm just having trouble running all this out for a final possible layout. Since every JT is diff, the variable resistor is gold for sweet spot finding. Lidmotors 13w cfl was running abt 700-800ma I think. Maybe this explains my confusion on most light per ma issue.

Edit: Tectalabyss, I did find that post abt the LED left across the E-C...it was by Jenna. When the secondary output is established, you remove the E-C LED for less current draw on the source battery. So, if you had 6 across there they were indeed on the source side as I mentioned. 2 weeks is still impressive. The post is #700 of this thread. If the secondary load isn't present you can kill the transistor. The BJT didn't use a pickup winding so the collapse came full back to the JT.

Hello Vaporizer and All.
Migraines have kept me down.I have got a few readings(" 20 pc 5mm straw hat leds on the secondary read 100 mil-amps. 24 pc 10mm leds read a little over 150 mil-amps") I did use a resistor it seems to help with the amp draw and voltage I also had to use a bridge rectifier or it would not work at all the leds are not bright I think due to not enough windings.I took the amp draw off the battery with and with out the leds and with and with out the led on the E/C at the transistor.I had ran the 20pc 5mm strawhat leds for two days off the secondary and my battery was still at 1.3 volts.I will include some pictures of my mess I also included a pic of my test bread board Hope this helps. Tec

[Vaporizer]

@ Tectalabyss,
Are your 10mm like these?
50p 10mm SUPER BRIGHT WHITE LED LAMP 140Kmcd FREE SHIP - eBay (item 370279921071 end time Dec-18-10 21:21:23 PST)

I would be more inclined to believe 200ma at that output. I'm going to buy some brighter than my 5mm 12000mcd's. They are rated @ 20-30ma, but a few yrs old.
Stacking 5 up for 700,000mcd expecting 100ma is way diff than if they are actually 200ma making it 1A ! Current draw from the high voltage of the secondary is strange to say the least with JT's & LEDs.
Any current draw numbers of what you do have would be appreciated.
Something like the type( size & rated output), current draw bright wit 1, 5, 10 in parallel would be great if not to much trouble.

The 8mm 1w @300ma........I'm just having trouble running all this out for a final possible layout. Since every JT is diff, the variable resistor is gold for sweet spot finding. Lidmotors 13w cfl was running abt 700-800ma I think. Maybe this explains my confusion on most light per ma issue.

Edit: Tectalabyss, I did find that post abt the LED left across the E-C...it was by Jenna. When the secondary output is established, you remove the E-C LED for less current draw on the source battery. So, if you had 6 across there they were indeed on the source side as I mentioned. 2 weeks is still impressive. The post is #700 of this thread. If the secondary load isn't present you can kill the transistor. The BJT didn't use a pickup winding so the collapse came full back to the JT.

[Vaporizer]

Ok.......success! Decided to try 1st not using the dremel since many will not have one. Ferrite was soft as I expected and the rough edges can be smoothed with a few light strokes of a round file or with 360-400 emery cloth. Total time was abt 5 min to do all edges. The pic shows the sharp edges and where I removed it with emery paper. It's out in the garage now drying. I sanded all surfaces, the faces were glossy, to help the paint stick. I found a can of plain red enamel too.

As soon as its dry I'll post the finished one next to a "raw" one.