Imhotep's Lab Interactive FAQ

dead link, can you repost the video??

Thanks you from France, with this working device...

Hi!, this is my circuit with Cap+SRC, din't see that before on Imhotep fan so I put it here. Work fine for me. Any commentary?, thanks!


http://www.myupload.dk/showfile/3392963ee3d.JPG/

Thats "SCR" for silicone controlled rectifier.

Good to see people having a little experiment with various methods.

The SCR circuit you have presented above is the basic capacitive pulser (capacitive discharge charger). You should probably use a fullwave bridge rectifier to fill the cap with. You can pop your circuits if you only use a half wave and small capacitances.

You can also try a zener diode or add some resistance on the gate of the SCR. This will allow the cap to fill higher before it dumps.

The next step is to build an electrically operated switching mechanism, as seen on JB's patents. This can lead to some interesting experiments. I used a 10uF 400v cap on the recovery side of one of my monopoles and I was able to time the discharges into the charging battery as I saw fit. From there I placed an ignition coil in series, so that up to 150v from the cap was dumped through the primary of the ignition coil on its way to the charging battery.

From there I used the HV out to light globes, or fill another cap to over 1000v. All while still charging a second battery.

But for best battery charging use a large capacitance cap and dump no more than 18v into your battery. High voltage low capacitance caps are great for reviving batteries, especially NiCD's Ive heard. At higher capacitances (10000uF or larger) if the voltage is too high it can warp the plates inside the battery.

Good stuff.