Inductor boost convertor

5 transistors for something what can be done with 1 transistor. Anyway its your first own solution. Keep it up

One transistor? I’d like to see that.

Thanks, I will

I'm guessing he's talking about the joule theif that uses a transformer (but I don't have a transformer) which is why I've used inductors... otherwise, if it can be done much simpler without a transformer, then I'd like to see that too

I have something like this with only 1 Transistor, 1 Resistor and 2 Inductors

Maybe give me a link @Raptor_Bash? I’d be interested to see how it works.

You haven't followed my circuits the last years?

@Issacsutt, make the transformer as simple as you can imagin, take two 1m wires and turn them around your finger. Tape the coil and use it as transformer. No way out for excuses !

No way out for excuses huh, I'd say that's a good way to experiment it, but not so good for a more practical approach... probably a little too tacky also. I already know its possible, no need to prove that, I'm looking to make a one I could put together on a pcb, and find a good use for

I just bough a bunch of resistor shaped inductors of various values, because if was cheaper, and much more compact. Values range between 1uH and 1mH.

I was designing this circuit based around what components I have, without making it so large and bulky that it wouldn't fit on my pcb

Right, i forgot you are working on a project for the next mars mission, right. Always an excuss. Issacsutt, you really stress to many times this community.

And you have too many spelling errors

At least he is still readable. It is very rare that you actually can’t understand him.

I know Jason

By the way, I just tested it a couple hours ago, it works flawlessly so far.... and reaches a max of about 57v (surprisingly, it worked the first try, never even had to troubleshoot anything)... but I'm using a 9v battery that's got roughly 6v left I think

9V with 6V left is very drained. It’ll have a much higher internal resistance than a fresh battery. It may not be able to provide much current when loaded. Also, was your output capacitor rated for such voltages? The output voltage may have been limited by the ability of the capacitor the handle such voltages. I really don’t know much about how components behave outside of their operating conditions though.

No, but what I did was put two 22uF capacitors rated for 50v each, in series with each other to double the voltage rating to 100v, which should be good enough. Otherwise, I'll just add a voltage limiter if I need to

I know it's a low battery, and now has higher internal resistance, but it's pretty much all I have right now

Ok. I see.

I’m not really sure why, but my parents like to keep stocks of batteries in their house, so whenever I need a battery there is almost always a fresh battery of either 1.5V, 6V, or 9V available. It’s even safe to short most of them out because most of them are alkaline. There are a few heavy duty (carbon-zinc) ones though, so I always check to make sure it’s alkaline. By the way, I’m thinking of making a DIY carbon arc lamp with two 6V batteries in series to power it, but I’ve heard they are very bright and I saw a youtube video by ElectroBOOM about properties of graphite and he forgot to put on his goggles a few times and each time he touched the electrodes together without his goggles on he briefly covered his eyes in pain. I’ve also heard that the carbon is very UV rich because of the high temperatures involved, which is another reason not to look at it. I could use a tin can (I think it’s actually aluminum, but that shouldn’t matter) to direct the light forwards to make it a flashlight type apparatus by placing the carbon arc in the can, but I have to make sure not to short out the electrodes through the metal of the can. I’m also think of having a tuning bolt which I can turn to adjust the distance between the electrodes to provide a good arc. I’m not sure how I’d implement the bolt and the insulation between the electrode and the can, but I should be able to figure something out. The only issue is trying to remember to actually get around to doing it.

Wish I had that many batteries, especially while having to evacuate from Hurricane Florance here in North Carolina, hopefully we'll still have a home... it's probably gonna be pretty devastating no matter where we go in NC or even SC. Anyhow, that's what's going on with me and my family right now... how is it there in CA? Are the waves looking good?

Making a lamp out of an ark should be pretty cool, but dangerous too (you may need some kind of light filtering shade or s ok something)... what makes you want to build a project like that?

I was reading about it and it looked pretty fun. I could put the arc in a disassembled translucent lightbulb (the ones with the whitened glass instead of clear glass to make the light easier on the eyes) to make the light less concentrated so that it isn’t too hard to look at. I could also add a potentiometer to adjust the light level (I’d need to make a makeshift one out of 0.7mm mechanical pencil lead though). Here in California, I haven’t actually been to the beach in recent memory. Last time I was at a beach was a few years ago in Cabo, Mexico. Two or three years ago my family had to evacuate the house because of a fire. We later came back and saw that the fire literally went right up to the road on the edge of the small group of houses I live in (Happy Jack, Lytle Creek) but the firefighters managed to hold it back there. Some reports of people who stayed even during the mandatory evacuation order because they had nowhere else to go said the the fire was raging very nearby and that it was extremely loud. I guess I’m really lucky my house is still here. If the fire got to my house, all those extra batteries would have exploded.

It's crazy, all these natural disasters, different things every year... I feel like global warming is getting worse and worse, it may be causing a lot of disturbance out there leading to all of this increasing activity. What could happen if the future... a global catastrophic 2012 !?!

Let me know how your ark lamp project goes

Your not just “feeling” like it’s getting worse and worse. It IS getting worse and worse. Global average temperatures have risen at a rate that sets a record in the whole history of the Earth. There is no doubt that this is human caused, because for it to occur right as the industrial revolution happened would be too much of a coincidence otherwise. I don’t remember which show showed me the chart showing the temperatures rising orders of magnitude faster than anytime priorly in Earth history (except possibly from natural disasters, but those generally cause global cooling like a volcanic winter from a super volcano). Also, about letting you know how to arc project goes, I will. I’m not sure when I’ll get to it, if ever, but if I do I hope nothing goes wrong. Last time I did a chemistry experiment the concoction turned out to be poisonous.

Next time I do a chemistry experiment, I’m gonna do it in a disposable plastic cup so I don’t loose any more glass ones to chemical contamination.

Haha :)

About your ark lamp, if you wanna make it happen, what I can say I have learned is... don't put it off til the last minute of course, but most importantly, (if your like me in a way), try not to worry too much about getting it absolutely perfect... all too often I'll unintentionally be spending so much time trying to get the perfect materials, and drawing up the most perfect plan/diagram, that I never get around to it, or it actually doesn't go anywhere close to according to plan. However, part if that might just be me having to work around my family's schedule too.

Or sometimes, I'll get another idea and end up getting a little sidetracked. I would love to just get a 3D printer, it would be so much easier to get those perfect parts I need. The only reason I haven't yet, is because I would have to buy a nice laptop to go with it, and I don't know anything about the software. And I have lots of little siblings that might hurt it/themselves

I mostly just put things together and hope it works and don’t worry about any perfect plan, at least at first. Once I get a proof of concept type apparatus working I can start working on something more, like putting it in a can to direct the light and having a tuning bolt I can turn to adjust the distance between electrodes.

In addition to being able to adjust the ark distance, you should probably add the ability to adjust the ark voltage too

Just thought of something else... Perhaps it should be a pulsing signal driving the ark, so that it's not using as much power, because it'll create a ton of heat

Or a resistor. Just a piece of 0.7mm mechanical pencil lead with contacts should make a nice potentiometer. That way no complicated pulsing circuits are needed and it’ll still have a sufficiently high striking voltage (voltage to start the arc) to work. But then again I’m already gonna be using the 0.7mm mechanical pencil lead as arc electrodes. Maybe I could just vary where I put the contacts on the electrodes to control power. If it’s still too bright I could but multiple pieces of pencil lead in series.

I just gave the project a try and without any fine control all I’ve been able to do is create a very small and dim electric blue spark that I couldn’t sustain for more than some milliseconds because of unsteady hands and it also made some funny smelling smoke. When I just touch the electrodes together the ends start glowing red after a second or so and the whole upper half of the pencil lead starts smoking more funny smelling smoke. This was done with two alkaline 9V batteries in series (the ones that are about half an inch wide on one side and an inch wide on another side and maybe two inches tall with both terminals on the top next to each other). I think I’ll need better control, a well ventilated area, and some bigger rods of graphite, which I don’t have. And no, I’m not gonna take apart a carbon-zinc battery for their bigger carbon electrodes.

I don't beleive that's enough voltage to create an ark though, a spark for sure, but not an ark, at least I really don't think so. You'd have to keep those electrodes closer and closer the lower the voltage is, but I'm pretty sure there's a threshold you have to pass in order for it to be possible... for ex: you can move the electrodes so close that they're only a couple atoms apart, but you would need laboratory equipment to do that, and it would also have to be very steady like you mentioned, so considering that, you can only get so close, and the resistance of air is great enough that even if the electrodes are fractions of a mm apart, the voltage would still have to be at least in the hundreds I'm sure. Occasionally, if you play around with a light switch in your home, and try to flip the switch extremely slowly, you can sometimes hear it crackle as if it was arking a little, and maybe even see it flash a little behind the switch plate, and that's at least 120v.

I'm surprised you were thinking of using lead as electrodes though, wouldn't they melt

Not lead, pencil lead which is graphite. I’m trying to make a carbon lamp with it. I was thinking that I could touch the electrodes together to start the arc then I could slowly separate them stretching the arc to get around the high voltages needed for a long arc.

If I‘d used real lead, I’m pretty sure it would’ve melted before it turned red. Not positive about that though, just pretty sure.

And I could’ve easily gotten lead poisoning, not something I want.

Wow, I just looked up the melting point of graphite, and apparently it doesn't melt at standard pressure

Yeah, once it gets extremely hot it just starts evaporating into gas (technically, when solid transitions straight to gas without a liquid phase it’s called sublimation). It has to be at like 5 times atmospheric pressure to have a liquid state.

The sublimation point of carbon (presumably for both graphite and diamond, although diamond might decompose into graphite when heated to that temperature) is 3642°C, 220°C higher than the melting point of tungsten, the metal with the highest melting point. Lead’s melting point is 328°C, so low that it glows entirely in the infrared range at that temperature. Things only start glowing visibly around 500-550°C.

Huh, interesting!