SSG Handbook build question

[Tim]

to begin with I like to use a similar battery on the front end and the back end. that way it is easy to see the gains in the circuit.

Tom C

Thanks Tom,

I was more or less looking to see that after multiple charge / discharge cycles if the battery indeed does take longer to discharge for the same amount of input as John B. states in his video. I can have my computer control a SSR and use that to control the time the supply battery powers the energizer and have it shut off at very precise times.

Tim

[Gary Hammond]

Hi James,

Gary, seems like we have similar batteries but grossly different aH ratings which is surprising.

I have the same 230 CCA Walmart battery that John Bedini used in his "Energy From The Vacuum" series part 24 and 25 also named Bedini Monopole Master Class 1 and 2. He says it's a 13 ah battery in those two videos!

I used to sell Interstate batteries several years ago, and their 230 CCA U-1 (the SP 30) had a reserve capacity rating of 30 minutes. And their literature states "to estimate the 20-hour capacity of any battery multiply the reserve capacity (RC) rating by 0.60." So the SP30 Interstate battery should have a 30x.6 or
18 ah rating. I assumed the similar Walmart battery would have the same ah rating, but not according to JB. I think the Walmart batteries are over rated. When I called the company that makes them for Walmart they refused to give me either the ah rating or the RC rating.

And according to the discharges I've done with the Radio Mountain CBA, it appeared to start out around 14 ah and has now degraded to around 9 or 10 ah.

I started out using 650 ma discharge rates, and now have settled on a 500 ma rate. Of course the battery is now nearly 2 years old.

[Tim]

Hi James,


I have the same 230 CCA Walmart battery that John Bedini used in his "Energy From The Vacuum" series part 24 and 25 also named Bedini Monopole Master Class 1 and 2. He says it's a 13 ah battery in those two videos!

I used to sell Interstate batteries several years ago, and their 230 CCA U-1 (the SP 30) had a reserve capacity rating of 30 minutes. And their literature states "to estimate the 20-hour capacity of any battery multiply the reserve capacity (RC) rating by 0.60." So the SP30 Interstate battery should have a 30x.6 or
18 ah rating. I assumed the similar Walmart battery would have the same ah rating, but not according to JB. I think the Walmart batteries are over rated. When I called the company that makes them for Walmart they refused to give me either the ah rating or the RC rating.

And according to the discharges I've done with the Radio Mountain CBA, it appeared to start out around 14 ah and has now degraded to around 9 or 10 ah.

I started out using 650 ma discharge rates, and now have settled on a 500 ma rate. Of course the battery is now nearly 3 years old.

Gary,

That is very interesting to know that the Ah rateing of the battery has went down (not what I would expect), John does state in one of the videos that I have that the battery capacity grows. That is what I am doing this experiment for is to see that if the battery capacity indeed does increase, I would not think that it goes above what it is when new, but then again I'm am going by what John stated in the video. It was something like a 35 Ah battery would seem like a 65 amp hour battery after it had been conditioned (I'm not sure if thosed are the exact numbers he used but it would have been close to that). I realize that his engizer is much larger, but I wanted to see if there is any improvment at all even on a small scale.

Tim

[Tom C]

Gary,

That is very interesting to know that the Ah rateing of the battery has went down (not what I would expect), John does state in one of the videos that I have that the battery capacity grows. That is what I am doing this experiment for is to see that if the battery capacity indeed does increase, I would not think that it goes above what it is when new, but then again I'm am going by what John stated in the video. It was something like a 35 Ah battery would seem like a 65 amp hour battery after it had been conditioned (I'm not sure if thosed are the exact numbers he used but it would have been close to that). I realize that his engizer is much larger, but I wanted to see if there is any improvment at all even on a small scale.

Tim

The monopole process adds some capacity to your battery but it will NOT double it, that is unrealistic. there are other factors also in regards to battery cycling. I would suggest you get peter lindemmans battery secrets lecture to see what they did to get the increased capacity using Johns methods, it is very interesting. charge termination voltage, current draw, load cycle times all play a factor in capacity increases.

Tom C

[Tom C]

sorry to add to this tim, could you tell us what you are charging to and discharging to?

Tom C

[Tim]

sorry to add to this tim, could you tell us what you are charging to and discharging to?

Tom C

Tom,

I'm charging to 15.30 volts or there abouts and discharging to 12.0 volts (I know this is a little low), and the battery that I am playing with for these first tests is not my tractor battery but a Excide 12N5-4B 12 volt lead acid and discharging at 360 milliamps with the CBA.

This is just a small battery I bought to experiment with to see if I can get the discharge time to increase at all.

Tim

[Gary Hammond]

Hi Tim,

Well, I went back and checked my SSG calculator results and see that I mis-stated the age of my battery. It's only 2 years old now, not 3. Got it and another one on 4-1-11 and started with my first 20 runs in June of 2011. This was on the old yahoo site and I was using the kit I got from Rick. I was getting terrible results not realizing the kit was way too small for this size battery.

Then I went to a 7 ah flooded, drycharged, motor cycle battery and got equally poor results. And finally in June of 2012 I got a new 5 ah SLA battery and was able to get somewhat better results. Battery COPs a little over 1, but system COPs were only around 0.3 . I was on the last of 20 runs with the 5 ah battery when this new forum was established, so never did post any results from the SSG Calculator on either forum.

I then soon discovered that the kit from Rick was totally inadequate for anything over 3 or 4 ah. So I built a 5 filar 18awg circuit with 4 matched transistors and all matched resistors and diodes. I wound the coil with 155' litzed 18 awg for all 5 strands. That was the length and size recommended at the time by Tom C and John K, so that's what I did.

By this time my Walmart batteries had been sitting around for about 9 months, so I cycled them a few times using a 10-A-12 Renaissance charger and West Mountain CBA III tester. I then started charging the 230 CCA Walmart battery on the rebuilt SSG and load testing with the CBA III. This was in September of 2012. I did 20 runs with a battery COP average of about 1.1 and a system COP average of about .55 as I kept experimenting with the tunning on the new SSG set up. I was discharging at a 650 ma rate for this series of 20 runs with a load termination voltage of 12.00 volts.

Then beginning around Thanksgiving of 2012 I ran another series of 13 runs using a constant 775 ma draw on the primary and discharging with a constant 500 ma load through the CBA III to a termination voltage of 12.20. It was during this series of runs that I was seeing a rather steady decline in battery capacity. The battery COP and system COP remained about the same, but the charge times and discharge times both kept getting shorter. So my conclusion was that the charge battery was slowly losing capacity. The 275 CCA run battery, however seemed to be holding up fine and was being recharged with the Renaissance 10A-12.

So I have no idea why the SSG charged battery seems to be dying and the 10A-12 charged battery seems to be still doing well? At any rate the SSG is right at the upper limit of the C20 rate of the run battery. And I'm now in the process of changing it over to attraction mode from repulsion mode. All my testing so far has been in repulsion mode. I do know that most of these U1 cheap batteries will only last a year in normal lawn tractor use. So maybe this one is just dying from old age and intermittent use?

[Tim]

sorry to add to this tim, could you tell us what you are charging to and discharging to?

Tom C

Tom,

I am charging to approx 15.30 volts and discharging to 12.0 volts (I know this is a little low), but this is just a small 12v lead acid that I bought for just this purpose (Excide 12N5-4B). My discharge rate is a little high at 360 milliamps (.360 amps) as this is only a 5 AH battery. I wanted something that I could cycle fairly quickly to see if the discharge time increases at all when I have the CBA discharge the battery.

Tim

[Tim]

Hi Tim,

Well, I went back and checked my SSG calculator results and see that I mis-stated the age of my battery. It's only 2 years old now, not 3. Got it and another one on 4-1-11 and started with my first 20 runs in June of 2011. This was on the old yahoo site and I was using the kit I got from Rick. I was getting terrible results not realizing the kit was way too small for this size battery.

Then I went to a 7 ah flooded, drycharged, motor cycle battery and got equally poor results. And finally in June of 2012 I got a new 5 ah SLA battery and was able to get somewhat better results. Battery COPs a little over 1, but system COPs were only around 0.3 . I was on the last of 20 runs with the 5 ah battery when this new forum was established, so never did post any results from the SSG Calculator on either forum.

I then soon discovered that the kit from Rick was totally inadequate for anything over 3 or 4 ah. So I built a 5 filar 18awg circuit with 4 matched transistors and all matched resistors and diodes. I wound the coil with 155' litzed 18 awg for all 5 strands. That was the length and size recommended at the time by Tom C and John K, so that's what I did.

By this time my Walmart batteries had been sitting around for about 9 months, so I cycled them a few times using a 10-A-12 Renaissance charger and West Mountain CBA III tester. I then started charging the 230 CCA Walmart battery on the rebuilt SSG and load testing with the CBA III. This was in September of 2012. I did 20 runs with a battery COP average of about 1.1 and a system COP average of about .55 as I kept experimenting with the tunning on the new SSG set up. I was discharging at a 650 ma rate for this series of 20 runs with a load termination voltage of 12.00 volts.

Then beginning around Thanksgiving of 2012 I ran another series of 13 runs using a constant 775 ma draw on the primary and discharging with a constant 500 ma load through the CBA III to a termination voltage of 12.20. It was during this series of runs that I was seeing a rather steady decline in battery capacity. The battery COP and system COP remained about the same, but the charge times and discharge times both kept getting shorter. So my conclusion was that the charge battery was slowly losing capacity. The 275 CCA run battery, however seemed to be holding up fine and was being recharged with the Renaissance 10A-12.

So I have no idea why the SSG charged battery seems to be dying and the 10A-12 charged battery seems to be still doing well? At any rate the SSG is right at the upper limit of the C20 rate of the run battery. And I'm now in the process of changing it over to attraction mode from repulsion mode. All my testing so far has been in repulsion mode. I do know that most of these U1 cheap batteries will only last a year in normal lawn tractor use. So maybe this one is just dying from old age and intermittent use?

Gary,

I'm a little concerned at these results and this is the same test I wanted to do for myself. I bought a cheap little 5AH excide battery just to see if the process can increase the ampacity at all. I purchased the SSG beginners handbook for reference (I've built several small energizers), but wanted to be sure I was doing everything corectly, I built the 7 transistor circuit and all appears to be working correctly, the system draws 1.3 amps and the transistors stay cool and all other componets also stay cool. The components are NOT matched, but the system seems to charge pretty good, taking my 5AH battery to over 15 volts in under 2.5 hours and my tractor battery to over 15 volts over night.

I'm also using the West Mountain CBA III to do the discharge cycles, I at one time had a solid state relay hooked to my computer and controlling the supply battery to power the SSG to be able to shut it down at exactly the same time for each cycle on a previous build, but got side tracked with life events and did not stay consistant with my cycles. Guess I'll see what happens now, hopefully my results will be a little better than the disapointing ones that you have had.

Thanks for all the info.

Tim

[Tom C]

Tom,

I am charging to approx 15.30 volts and discharging to 12.0 volts (I know this is a little low), but this is just a small 12v lead acid that I bought for just this purpose (Excide 12N5-4B). My discharge rate is a little high at 360 milliamps (.360 amps) as this is only a 5 AH battery. I wanted something that I could cycle fairly quickly to see if the discharge time increases at all when I have the CBA discharge the battery.

Tim

Tim,

small batteries are really sensitive to discharge voltage and current draw........ get your current draw down to C20. you are charging way fast for a 5AH battery almost 2 amps into the primary.

Tom C

[Tom C]

Tom C. or others,

Onto a couple of side notes, My energizer is drawing 1.3 amps from the supply battery. I know john said that his draws 1 amp so I'm assuming that this should not be a problem, but plaese let me know if you think differently.

Also my batteries are I believe 225 CCA, I did find that out after closer inspection. Can you give me an idea as to what amperage it should be discharged at for the correct c-20 rate?

I will post some pictures and possably a video, because I would like for someone to see the neon discharge sequence, they do not all flash brightly at the same exact time, but all do glow with a dull yellow on each element, they all do flash, just not at the same exact time and it is a BRILLIANT flash. I know this is not good for the transistors, so I do not let it happen for any more than a very short period.

Thanks again.

Tim

Tim that is way too much current draw for a 5 AH battery, you are basically using the SG as a standard charger. I would expect only about 80 milliamp draw for a battery that small. your coil is just too big for that little battery you are killing it. your little battery should take 12 to 15 hrs to charge, its probably boiling like mad inside.


Tom C

[cindi]

just an observation if a 230cca is equivalent to 13ah and its c20 rate is around 650ma and the sg machine is 8filar 18# 7 transistors 125ma each -total of 875ma
if you use two equal batteries of 13ah then you should be pushing the primary battery to hard in the first place

[D Rhodes]

Don't know if this has been asked before, though I remember it from the Yahoo forum ..Why does the Bedini SG Beginners Handbook say to use R45 welding rods in the core? I thought it was best to use R60?
Anyone?
Thanks, Dennis

[Tom C]

there is almost no difference between the two. its a matter of size you want the small diameter rods to break up the eddy currents. either will work fine.... Tom C

[D Rhodes]

Thanks for that Tom. On another note, I spent $70 buying rods from Thorweldingsupplies in Australia and got ripped off. The site took the money, but no rods arrived, no emails are answered, no phone calls pick up...either the guy is dead, in jail, on permanent leave? So Aussies do not buy from Thorweldingsupplies!!
Thanks again.
Dennis