Imhotep's Lab Interactive FAQ

I got the new marine deep-cycle batteries, followed the suggestion from
JB's work to discharge battery to 10V for lead acid before doing a radiant
charge, and I have been plateaued right at 12.12 volts for about 3 days.
Using a relay charger, I checked quickly to see if the spike was up to par
and it was a bit weak, so I sanded the contacts and it recovered to normal
specs. That was over 30 hours ago, and I'm still stuck at 12.12V.
I know a (surface) "Fluff Charge" will falsely inflate the readings,
and for a while I was glad to see the figure did not drop off at all
when I removed the relay (it normally drops alot on most batteries)
so I assumed my true charge rate was equal to the relay's total input.
I'd like your input on this one, I started charging Saturday, around
noon tomorrow it will be a whole week. IT BETTER START showing more charge soon,
I'm starting to wonder what's up?

Anyone get this before? LMK!

12.12v does seem low especially for a new battery. I would do a conventional charge on it. It is always best to fully charge a battery conventionally to find its normal standing voltage before we start our experiments.


It takes me over 24 hours to charge a 9ah battery the first time. as the battery conditions during the cycling process the charge is accepted faster. Obviously the bigger the capacity of the battery the longer it will take.

What mbrownn said about a full "normal" charging first sound like that's what I've read. Logically you would want to know the
benchmark, max voltage, before starting a radiant charge.

But about after that and about radiant charging :
I thought the procedure was when the battery stops taking a charge you discharge and repeat. Does not matter at what voltage it stops at.

Randy

Good comments, gives me some ideas.

The only other thing that might be a factor, I discharged this battery too far the first time,
maybe it's just taking longer to come back. It was 12.90 Volts when I got it.

over discharging will reduce the battery voltage that it will charge to. you may be able to bring it back but it may take a long time.

I over discharged a 12v 7ah battery, took it down to 4v under load, when it was rested it recovered to 8.8v. I then radiant charged it for 3 days and the voltage was 11.2v at rest. I cycled it 8 more times, discharging it when the voltage stopped noticeably rising. The voltage was then 11.34v at rest. I tried a conventional trickle charge with no further improvement so put it on radiant charge for two weeks, the voltage now was 12.1v at rest so without discharging i gave it another radiant charge for another 2 weeks. The battery recovered and is now back up to 12.7v at rest and has full capacity back.

Based on this i would say, with a small radiant charger, it may take months to bring a 65ah battery back to full voltage and capacity.

I will also post this under working with batteries.

Thanks mbrownn, I think I will give it until tomorrow and then cycle it again.
Got any figures as to what kind of output I should get on a load test, fellas?

Keep your battery on charge untill the voltage wont rise.

The figures i give below are for a 12v 65ah starter battery.

If you discharge the battery at a slow (C20 or higher) rate you should get around the the rating of your battery (v x Ah ie 12v x 65Ah = 700 watts) if the battery is conditioned you will get more.

If you discharge the battery faster you will get less

On maximum load (cranking amps) it depends upon the surface area of the plates a starter battery will be around 550 to 650 amps for a few seconds. A deep cycle battery will be much less amps but the voltage and amps will not fall as fast. Caution heavy loads on a deep cycle battery can damage it and there is a risk of explosion.

I got it back up to 12.49 (trickle charge) then slapped the IRO back on it
last night to see what we get today. I'm looking at a faster IRO multi-coil
setup, I think I have all the stuff for it but we'll see I guess. Should work!

multi filar is the only way to go if you want to make your charger stronger. Multifilar with parallel windings each with their own transistor will also increase amp draw, but not at the expense of the spike. Infact it will amplify it when done correctly.

Ill tell you a little story about one of my builds. It follows JBs suggestions that bigger batteries need lower impedance/resistance coils to effectively charge them properly. My original monopole build (acrylic wheel seen on youtube, user shannrenn) was over 800 turns of 0.5mm wire trifilar. It had two power windings with their switches paralleled both triggered in unison by the trigger wire, which was a thinner gauge again, 0.4 if I remember correctly.

I was frustrated that this wheel, while being super efficient running at under 50ma, couldnt charge up my 7 amp hour batteries past 12.8 or so. I brought some 1.3 amp hours which just fit into my C20 and noticed a big difference. Now I could push them over the top. Next step was another build with thicker cables. AWG 18 x 3 @ 120ft each. BEAST. Straight away with two power windings I was able to push my 7 amp hours over 14v. @ 1 amp draw sweet spot I could get a 7 amp hour from 12.2v to 14v in about 3 hours.

I was able to run it without a load on two power windings and the neons would flash a brilliant purple white, my smaller SG would just glow orange, and usually just on one of the legs of the neon. Time to upgrade again and I wound another wire onto the bobbin for a trigger and hooked up 3 mjl21194's in parallel for the 18 AWG power windings. Even better again. And when I went to see the pretty neon show guess what? POP POP POP. Three MJL's smoked instantly from the transient spikes. It didnt help when I did it again by accident, knocking off the charging battery connection. POP POP POP. Neons were no help at all. Thats over $80 bucks worth of transistors in 2 days, a record for me They are rated @ 250v and with 2 power wires previously connected I was unable to pop them.


Think about how this is possible. Why is it more powerful with multiple windings in parallel? Each of my power windings is 1.6 ohms. So what is the resistance when they are all paralleled? Why has John built machines that have 50 of these wires, 49 of them paralleled? What would be the resistance of these collectively.......

Regards

My first Bedini fans, with 80 ohm coils would light the neon's purple for one second then after that, would not light the neon's at all; however it did charge a 7ah battery up to 12.9v (peak) in about 48 hours in about 2 to 3 days. (it had no effect on larger batteries) the amp draw was about 80ma.

My second, larger ones, with coils of about 6.7 ohms would light the neons and charge the battery to 13.7v (peak) in 24 hours. A 12ah battery was charging but i was too inpatient to wait for it to charge) the amp draw was around 180ma. The wire gauge was #32

My rewound fans with 30 gauge wire at 6 ohms would light the neon's and charge the battery to 14.2v Peak) in 12 hours. the amp draw was 190ma. The 12ah battery reached 13.8v in 24 hours

My rewound fans with 27 and 30 gauge wire at 5 ohms on the power coil would charge the battery to 14.8v (peak) in 7 hours. the amp draw was 220ma. The 12ah battery took 14 hours

When i paralleled an ignition coil with the last three fan configurations the 7ah battery would charge to 14.4+ in 5 hours, drawing 500, 550 and 600ma respectively. the neon's glow whitish purple

All the fans are bifilar

It is obvious that lower impedance is increasing the charge; however there are too many variables to compare my results.

1) Battery condition was improving so each charge was getting faster.

2) Battery capacity was increasing.

3) The 12ah battery has a lower sg than the 7ah.

4) The 7ah battery was very old and very sulphated at the start and would only charge to 8.8v conventionally. the 12ah battery was a little sulphated and would charge to 12.1 volts conventionally (rested voltages).

5) Some of the transistors popped and had to be changed because of bad practice.

6) Wiring of the Bedini circuit was improved. etc, etc.

My results cannot be considered scientific.

Using multi-filer coils will have many effects, most of which are positive like increased torque and lower resistance combined with higher output.

Vortex, did you try multi-filer coils with your window motor?