Shock, Horror Gasp! Dept.


I was playing with my Relay Spark Gap Tesla Coil ( RSGTC )
the other day and I noticed something funny was happening,

I was seeing how low a voltage it would run on so I hooked up a 6 volt SLA and when I checked the supply voltage It was higher than when it was at Idle!

W.T.F.?

Naaah, nah, nah, this is not Right!
I could see the circuit was using power, it was lighting up a flouro!
Must be a flat battery in my D.M.M.,
so I changed the 9 volt and fired it up again.

W.T.F.? again.
.
Hmmmm,
ok hook it up to the 12 volt SLA,
no every thing seems kosher here,
voltage dropping slowly Milli volt by Milli volt.

Ok, try the 13.8 volt Motorcycle battery,
same, same,
ok try hooking the wet cell and SLA together to get 24 volt or so,
impressive but nothing unusual here either.

Last resort a 9 volt ni-cad,
nada, everything cool here too.

Hook the 6 volt up
and it's doin' the weird shit again,
what the hell is going on here!

After much Pondering and Brane stretchin' I think I have an answer!

Back E.M.F.!

Yep, I reckon that explains a heap!

I reckon a relationship exists between the freq. it oscillates at when running @ 6 v., and
possibly the relay coil or maybe the physical construction of the SLA or maybe even both!

It's not quite Over Unity, more like Close to Unity!
It took about 3 days to run down to 5.2 volt at which point the relay could no longer sustain itself!
( not bad for a 12 volt relay!)

This compares to about 3.5 hrs. using the 12 volt 1.2 a/h SLA!

Ah, I hear you say, how many a/h is the 6 volt?
The answer is 6.5 a/h!
so taking the discharge rate of the 12 volt into account we come up with <20 hours!

It will take a better Brane than mine to explain it properly and model it Mathematically but,
I will endeavour to some how optimise a cct to take advantage of this anomaly,
you never know,
they say the greatest discoveries started out as mistakes!

cheers,
Mick. ;-))