If you need assistance, please send an email to forum at 4hv dot org. To ensure your email is not marked as spam, please include the phrase "4hv help" in the subject line. You can also find assistance via IRC, at irc.shadowworld.net, room #hvcomm.
Support 4hv.org!
Donate:
4hv.org is hosted on a dedicated server. Unfortunately, this server costs and we rely on the help of site members to keep 4hv.org running. Please consider donating. We will place your name on the thanks list and you'll be helping to keep 4hv.org alive and free for everyone. Members whose names appear in red bold have donated recently. Green bold denotes those who have recently donated to keep the server carbon neutral.
Special Thanks To:
Aaron Holmes
Aaron Wheeler
Adam Horden
Alan Scrimgeour
Andre
Andrew Haynes
Anonymous000
asabase
Austin Weil
barney
Barry
Bert Hickman
Bill Kukowski
Blitzorn
Brandon Paradelas
Bruce Bowling
BubeeMike
Byong Park
Cesiumsponge
Chris F.
Chris Hooper
Corey Worthington
Derek Woodroffe
Dalus
Dan Strother
Daniel Davis
Daniel Uhrenholt
datasheetarchive
Dave Billington
Dave Marshall
David F.
Dennis Rogers
drelectrix
Dr. John Gudenas
Dr. Spark
E.TexasTesla
eastvoltresearch
Eirik Taylor
Erik Dyakov
Erlend^SE
Finn Hammer
Firebug24k
GalliumMan
Gary Peterson
George Slade
GhostNull
Gordon Mcknight
Graham Armitage
Grant
GreySoul
Henry H
IamSmooth
In memory of Leo Powning
Jacob Cash
James Howells
James Pawson
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Thomas
Jesse Frost
Jim Mitchell
jlr134
Joe Mastroianni
John Forcina
John Oberg
John Willcutt
Jon Newcomb
klugesmith
Leslie Wright
Lutz Hoffman
Mads Barnkob
Martin King
Mats Karlsson
Matt Gibson
Matthew Guidry
mbd
Michael D'Angelo
Mikkel
mileswaldron
mister_rf
Neil Foster
Nick de Smith
Nick Soroka
nicklenorp
Nik
Norman Stanley
Patrick Coleman
Paul Brodie
Paul Jordan
Paul Montgomery
Ped
Peter Krogen
Peter Terren
PhilGood
Richard Feldman
Robert Bush
Royce Bailey
Scott Fusare
Scott Newman
smiffy
Stella
Steven Busic
Steve Conner
Steve Jones
Steve Ward
Sulaiman
Thomas Coyle
Thomas A. Wallace
Thomas W
Timo
Torch
Ulf Jonsson
vasil
Vaxian
vladi mazzilli
wastehl
Weston
William Kim
William N.
William Stehl
Wesley Venis
The aforementioned have contributed financially to the continuing triumph of 4hv.org. They are deserving of my most heartfelt thanks.
Registered Member #3859
Joined: Sun May 01 2011, 03:47PM
Location:
Posts: 179
I read a lot about Tesla and his transformer experiments. The magnifying transformer theory sounds like something very difficult to understand. It sounds somewhat pseudo-scientific if we try to analyze it.
What was magnified in the magnifying transformer, for example? A lot of Tesla's descriptions of the high voltage phenomena appear to be poetic exaggerations of the phenomena that we encounter today. But is it possible that Tesla attempted to describe something different than what we believe his greatest scientific breakthroughs were? I started to reach the conclusion that Tesla physics is not understood to its depth.
Over the course of reading his papers, Colorado Springs Notes and looking at the patents, I started to understand what magnifying transformers may have been used for.
I figured that the secondary coil of the Tesla Transformer is a resonator. Like a bell. And the primary of the transformer is like a clapper of the bell.
The clapper strikes, the bell resonates. When the clapper strikes again, if the bell is still ringing, the ringing is extinguished, then it rings again. But construction interference is not possible in a bell.
The difference between the clapper and the spark discharge that drives the primary of the Tesla Coil is that the discharge occurs in a much shorter period of time. Therefore if it is positioned correctly, in timing, relatively to the oscillation from the previous discharge in the Secondary Coil, there may be CONSTRUCTIVE INTERFERENCE. This is what the "Magnifying Transfromer" may have been used for. It produced constructive interference and could accumulate large amounts of energy. This accumulation of energy is due to the addition of electrical energy to the energyalready resonating in the coil.
It is similar to how child is pushed on a swing only at a specific time to make give more energy to the swing. Energy becomes potential from kinetic from potential with some losses. Similar processes occur in the secondary transformer of the Tesla Coil as it oscillates, being an RCL resonator circuit in itself.
It is a mystery to me how Tesla accomplished this constructive interference using technological methods of his time.
I see that many hobbyists today build a Phase Lock Loop Tesla Coil. It is a Digital Solid State Tesla Coil that may exhibit some of the above qualities and support constructive interference without influencing the RCL charachteristics of the secondary through the circuitry itself, as it would happen in a simple transistor-driven high voltage circuit such as a Slayer Exciter? After all why where PLL circuits developed in the first place?
Shortt-Synchronome - - may not open in your browser.
One limitation of the SSTC that I see is that the sharpness of the "clapper" impulse will not be as instantaneous with semiconductors as with a spark discharge.
Therefore I am trying to construct a Solid State Tesla Coil that uses PLL to determine when it is appropriate to fire the next impulse. It will still use a spark gap discharge device. This Tesla Coil should not fire every time when construction interference is possible but only when the capacitor bank is full.
I want to build a Tesla Transformer specifically to achieve effects of constructive interference in the secondary coil.
There are many mysterious effects that surround Tesla physics that may be explained if it is possible to build such device.
To some extent I was inspired by this illustration that I found a long time ago and cannot remember where it came from.
FPGA - based PLL circuit is a little bit too difficult for me to build.
What do you think about the overall hypothesis? Thank you.
Registered Member #54596
Joined: Fri Mar 06 2015, 11:31AM
Location:
Posts: 19
As I understand it, what is magnified is both voltage and current. As you say, it uses constructive interference to accumulate energy in the secondary. The voltage at the elevated capacity increases accordingly, as does the intensity of the current at the ground terminal.
Reading the patents (specifically, 645576, 649621, and 1119732), it sounds like there were three different ideas:
1. Connect two Tesla coils together by their toploads, transmitting high voltage power (low I2R loss) over a single transmission line. Pretty sure this was done at his lab in New York. Totally feasible, except for possibly some difficulty transforming the received power to low frequency AC or DC to run motors and such. But he may have been planning for devices to use high frequency or impulse current directly.
2. Create massive voltage at the elevated capacity, but without sparking. It would gradually ionize the surrounding air and create a conductive plasma column reaching up to 30000 feet where the air is thin enough to conduct at the voltages he was using. Power could be picked up by airplanes or by balloons floated up to 30000 feet. At least, according to his theory, which may be wrong because it was based on an experiment using a closed pipe of low pressure air. I don't think it was ever tested in open atmosphere.
3. Create massive currents going into the ground, to set up standing waves in the Earth, which could be received elsewhere by similar devices with large ground antennas. This is what he did at Colorado Springs, and apparently it worked.
Wardenclyffe may have been a combination of 2 and 3, but I don't think we'll ever know for sure. It's very confusing trying to figure out exactly what Tesla himself did, versus what his patents say he wanted to do, versus what other people say he did.
As I understand it, to get constructive interference you just need to have the same volume of "active metal" (accounting for skin effect) in the primary and secondary coils. And make the primary capacitor tuneable so you can fiddle it until it matches the capacitance of the secondary coil. Fine wire, litz wire, copper tubing, outer conductor of coax, and sheet metal are all good ways to minimize skin effect, so you can go by weight to get equal active volume. But I have yet to put this theory to practice myself...
And for powering, I'm not sure if Tesla was letting the capacitors fully discharge on every impulse, or quenching the spark gap. He definitely used various quenching methods in some experiments (read Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High Frequency), so I would guess that he kept doing it that way (not letting the capacitors fully discharge) for all the later work in Colorado and such.
I think I remember hearing that he used a mercury arc rectifier in Colorado, which I think would be like a perfectly quenched spark gap (allow one impulse to jump across, but no oscillation), but don't quote me on that.
Registered Member #3859
Joined: Sun May 01 2011, 03:47PM
Location:
Posts: 179
I agree. According to what I found out, the primary didn't have much to do with the resonance in the secondary.
It was a clapper that rung the bell and had to have either a damped or an over-damped oscillation in it. If primary "rang" like the secondary, than it would have taken energy out of the secondary.
I am growing very skeptical about the mass of copper in the primary and mass of copper in the secondary statement. Maybe there is a reason behind it but I haven't seen any math supporting it.
I am not a physicist. I am a dropout engineering student.
All I am trying to do is to test the historical scientific hypotheses. I saw a documentary where a historian tried to repeat Newton's alchemy experiments that should have lead to the creation of the philosopher stone.
By measuring the way secondary self-frequency drifts as it is energized with more power (voltage to current back to voltage) this system can be used as a measuring device. Maybe as a bounty hunting metal detector. But at this point I want to see if Tesla thought in this direction.
And yes, Tesla Coil secondary is by far a not stable RCL circuit. As it ionizes air around itself, as it oscillates the self-frequency of the coil drifts around. And this is where the magic is hidden. Tesla Transformer could self-tune itself to the environments it was used in. A new set of measuring devices may be born if we measure how, when and why Tesla Coil frequency floats around.
This effect is described by our crazier associates in the Tesla - themed free energy research. I had achieved this "self - tuning" effect in my experiments before. (not with Tesla coils) I don't know how to describe it in more scientific terms. Two near-identical Tesla Secondaries will still be slightly different in their self-resonance frequency if not for this self-tuning quality.
The size of the coil in the Wardenclyffe tower relative to the output was rather small. There had to be construction interference.
Registered Member #54596
Joined: Fri Mar 06 2015, 11:31AM
Location:
Posts: 19
Hmm, I don't think I've seen math on the equal weight rule either. It may indeed be bogus. I assumed it was a primitive way to match the resonant frequency of the primary system and secondary system, but actually I'm not even sure that resonance matching is the goal. Especially since, as you say, ionizing the air would probably throw the frequencies out of whack right away.
Reading about the SSTC and DRSSTC that people build nowadays, it does sound like it works better if the primary and secondary have the same resonant frequency, but also that it's not absolutely necessary. This page says the primary is driven by feedback from the secondary, so that probably helps mitigate the effects of frequency changing.
But SSTCs are designed for making streamers, whereas Tesla's devices were designed for power transmission, so SSTC theory may not be applicable to replicating the original devices. It's still confusing what exactly the objectives are when building a true Tesla transformer. Match resonant frequency of primary and secondary, or not? Does the equal weight rule have some significance beyond being a primitive way to match the frequencies? And how exactly is it driven? If by magnetically quenched spark gap, how is the timing controlled? Does it just happen naturally by inductive feedback from the secondary to the primary causing a voltage spike that causes the spark gap to fire? Or is it more complicated than that?
Eric Dollard, who is the only person I know to replicate power transmission through the ground, says the trick is not to go theorizing and making 'improvements'. Just build it exactly like Tesla says. There's tricky stuff going on, which the mindset of modern physics blinds us to, so trying to theorize about it without reconstructing the mindset of the 1890's may be futile. But I've watched his lectures and read his books, and his descriptions don't seem to match up with how Tesla's patents describe it (which seem more in line with modern theory). And the patents don't have enough detail to build it exactly like Tesla says. Thus, I remain confused and indecisive on how to build my own coil.
Registered Member #3859
Joined: Sun May 01 2011, 03:47PM
Location:
Posts: 179
I want to focus on the self- tuning resonant circuit that uses the principle I described. The "bell" that can accumulate positive interference and add waves of resonating electricity.
Eric Dollard is an interesting character, like Terence McKenna or Timothy Leary, except for DIY research physics. He is a very successful researcher in the Tesla Physics/ Free Energy world. I would rather focus on my little piece of the puzzle that may answer all the questions that surrond Tesla physics.
I am willing to pay someone to build such device for me.
The options to build this device are: To wind a big coil, bigger than one meter tall and work with kiloherz requencies and TV PLL or Arduino microcontroller-like devices. Or to wind a smaller coil and to use Field Gate Programmable Array-based FPGA circuit to do everything inside one IC. However it is difficult to engineer such high frequency board in homegrown environment so I would stick to the former. Plus Tesla worked with lower frequencies himself.
It would be nice to have it all computer controlled. Tesla had a long life to tinker with analog circuits. I want a faster answer about interference inside the Tesla Coil.
Therefore if it is positioned correctly, in timing, relatively to the oscillation from the previous discharge in the Secondary Coil, there may be CONSTRUCTIVE INTERFERENCE.
Secondary oscillations die out in a few 100us. Spark gap firing periods are around a few ms. The relative phase between consecutive shots doesn't matter much.
According to what I found out, the primary didn't have much to do with the resonance in the secondary. It was a clapper that rung the bell and had to have either a damped or an over-damped oscillation in it. If primary "rang" like the secondary, than it would have taken energy out of the secondary.
The primary circuit does take energy out of the secondary. That's what coupled resonant circuits do. After the initial secondary ring-up, if the spark gap does not quench by then, energy is transfered to the primary coil. The overlaping beat frequency depends on the coupling and geometry of the two systems. The primary resonant frequency has very much to do with the secondary.
DekuTree64 wrote ...
Reading about the SSTC and DRSSTC that people build nowadays, it does sound like it works better if the primary and secondary have the same resonant frequency, but also that it's not absolutely necessary. This page says the primary is driven by feedback from the secondary, so that probably helps mitigate the effects of frequency changing.
But SSTCs are designed for making streamers, whereas Tesla's devices were designed for power transmission, so SSTC theory may not be applicable to replicating the original devices. It's still confusing what exactly the objectives are when building a true Tesla transformer. Match resonant frequency of primary and secondary, or not? Does the equal weight rule have some significance beyond being a primitive way to match the frequencies? And how exactly is it driven? If by magnetically quenched spark gap, how is the timing controlled? Does it just happen naturally by inductive feedback from the secondary to the primary causing a voltage spike that causes the spark gap to fire? Or is it more complicated than that?
Modern electronic coils use feedback systems to track this changing frequency and switch the transistors accordingly. This is understood and required for conventional SSTCs to work. Likewise tuning a spark gap coil primary lower achieves the same effect in principle. Don't make the mistake of simply looking at the primary or secondary circuit in isolation. They are a coupled system, like two pendulums hanging together from a separate line. Also, the entire driven oscillation occurs when the spark gap is conducting. The bell clapper analogy isn't accurate.
Finally as Uspring said, the relative phase between firings doesn't matter since each event is independent. Your goal of "acheving effects of constructive interference" is already what a normal Tesla Coil does on an RF cycle to cycle scale.
Registered Member #3859
Joined: Sun May 01 2011, 03:47PM
Location:
Posts: 179
Where "magnifying transformers" pseudo-scientific exaggerations then?
When spark occurs, should the primary coil be in the Damped or Over-damped state?
If we are exciting the Secondary Coil with a discharge of electricity through the Primary Coil and the discharge has a shape of a Dirac impulse: Is it the Voltage over Time that has the shape of the Dirac impulse or the Current over Time? Current? Since the vertex of the Dirac Delta Function is an infinitesimally small event, is timing of this event still important for the constructive interference to take place?
In a traditional Tesla Coil, the spark gap fires when there is a demand for energy in the primary due to the arrangement of "two pendulums"? Does this mean that when the spark takes place it necessarily causes waves to sum in the Secondary Coil?
Can Secondary be "force-fed" electricity in such way that we don't have to wait for the oscillations to decay beyond a certain point to add a new impulse?
I decided that I want to build a Phase Lock Loop Tesla Coil for my experiments. I am thinking about this beauty right here.
Not all transformer specifications are mentioned. The isolation power transformer is a little bit complicated for me to build/buy/find. Thank you.
Where "magnifying transformers" pseudo-scientific exaggerations then?
Well you have to define what you mean when you refer to 'magnifying transformers', as well as show what 'exaggerations' you are referring to. From what I've seen it seems like different people have different interpretations of what constitutes a magnifying transformer, and depending on which specific design topology being referred to, each have different claims.
Are you specifically talking about Tesla's original 'magnifying transformer' as he described, and the claims that he personally made (what exactly are they?). However Tesla did sometimes seem to make claims which may not have been verified by experiment.
Registered Member #3859
Joined: Sun May 01 2011, 03:47PM
Location:
Posts: 179
I am sorry for updating my above post and not reloading the page to see if I got a reply. I just want a PLL Tesla Coil to play with. I found some mystifying things in HV experiments that I cannot explain.
This site is powered by e107, which is released under the GNU GPL License. All work on this site, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. By submitting any information to this site, you agree that anything submitted will be so licensed. Please read our Disclaimer and Policies page for information on your rights and responsibilities regarding this site.
Mysterious Tesla Coil theory of operation and the experiment I am preparing.
