Prime Ideas

As crazy as it sounds, I’ve been having trouble finding stainless steel pipe around where I live.  The few places I contacted about getting it said they’d have to special order it and I’d have to purchase in 20′ lengths.  1 Stick is over $200 and for testing, I didn’t want to have to do this.

So, we set off for Lowes to see what we could find.  What I found were 1-1/2″ and 1-1/4″ Stainless Steel hand rails for handicap persons for the shower.  I purchased 1 of each that were 36″ long and proceeded to hack them up.  I cut them up in 5″ sections but aftwards wished I had cut the center pieces a half inch longer just to aid with assembly.  You’ll see what I’m talking about when I’m completely through putting it together.

So here is a shot of the outside tubes mounted in their sleeve.  I did this a little different from anything I’ve seen. I put the mounting plate at the top instead of bottom of the cell.  I did this to see if I can force the small bubbles that float around in the water to stay up on top of the cell instead of floating around and back into the cell itself.  I don’t know if this is going to work as I did not make it take up the entire top of the cell but rather just serve as a buffer of sorts.

Then the center tubes were cut and small holes approximately the same size of some stainless steel picture hanging wire (also purchased from home depot), was drilled into the ends in order to connect my anodes together.

So the idea is to connect the outside tubes via my small screws and then connect the inside tubes slightly extended beyond the ends of the cathode tubes using the holes.  We’ll see upon final assembly if this was a good idea or not.  I hope to finish it up this week and maybe start running some tests on it.

Here is a video clip of the tubes in their current state.

Oh, and one major note for those that are married!!!  Don’t let your wife know you bought brand new stainless handrails just so you could cut them up…   It doesn’t go over well…

On a side note:  I wanted to post a few results I’ve calculated between plates and pipes…

 I wanted to take a few minutes to determine the usefulness of tubes versus plates. One of the finished projects I posted was from a fellow named Ron and he see’s much more activity than I do and the only real difference is that he uses tubes and I’m using plates.So in an attempt to explain this here is what I did.

Check my math!!!

1) The outside tube is 1″ and calculating for a 1/16″ wall thickness, the surface area of the inside 1″ tube should be:
2 * pi * .4687 * 6″ height = 17.64″ of surface area
2 * pi * .375 * 6″ height = 14.14″ of surface area

calculating anode * 6 pipes = 84.82″ total surface area
calculating cathode * 6 pipes = 105.84″

My plates surface area minus the holes that I’ve drilled and the square light switch hole are 12.48″ per plate. So using this you see that it takes a minimum of 9 plates to get the same surface area as the tubes.

Ron is using a straight 12v with no timing circuit and you can see his results here:
http://www.primeideas.info/forum/viewtopic.php?t=35

Ron also did not build his cell the same as Dave in that he used smaller diameter pipe which means that it would take even less plates to match Ron’s design, yet he still produces a lot more gas than I am with the plate design.

I have used up to 11 plates in my design and never got it where it was outputting enough gas to create bubbles within a 30 minute time frame. So given this information it appears the tube design performs better than flat plates given no other information.
A few more pictures…

I’ve learned how to use my Oscilloscope finally (at least I think I have) and in the process learned some pretty interesting things I wanted to share.

1) Looking at my first 555 circuit that is responsible for turning the main 555 circuit on and off, I noticed that instead of speeding up and slowing down, it actually changes the length that the circuit is turned on.  This would mean to me that instead of actually changing a frequency with this circuit, we are keeping the cycle of off consistent and stretching out the time the circuit is engaged.

2) While using my battery charger I discovered that whenever the charger turns on, it substantially influences the frequency that the circuit is sending to the cell.  This means that to have a consistent result, we are going to have to power the cell with a consistent power source.

3) Because the two 555 circuits are not exactly changing the frequencies at which they run, but rather are simply changing the time at which they stay active, they tend to cancel each other out in spots and the scope won’t trigger to lock in signals.  But I found that if you listen to the cell with your ear, when the cell gets at its highest pitch, the scope triggers and locks in on the current.  So there is a physical pitch to the cell at the point where it appears to resonate, and depending on where each timing circuit is positioned, it will affect that setting.  Also, there is more than one spot along each setting that seems to resonate but they are very difficult to tune in by hand.  It makes it a lot easier though, now that I’ve discovered the pitch, because it helps you hear approximately where and then you can look at the scope to fine tune.

4) Because the circuits are not really providing a constant frequency (at least not in my mind) to the cell, it would appear that perhaps they need to be adjusted a bit.  I am going to consult some of my new friends on this subject though because its possible I’m thinking about this all wrong…

Just wanted to take a few minutes and let everyone know where we are.  I received my Oscilloscope yesterday so should be able to start giving exact frequencies at which things happen.  Should also aid in testing my circuits to be sure they are working properly.

 I’ve been studying the Myer’s patents again to try to get a better handle on what he was doing.  There are quite a few aspects of his patent that I find very interesting.  One is the use of what he called his Voltage Intensifier circuit.  After playing around a little with my timing circuit I don’t think that on its own, its going to do enough to help out.  I think this transformer of sorts is a necessary evil and I have set out to figure out what its doing exactly so that I can build one.

Some other aspects of his design that I think are going to be needed but not sure how to pull them off yet, is that his device seeked out the resonant frequencies.  Because the water mixture, contents, temperature as well as volume all make up the frequency at which it will best resonate, I would assume a constant modification of the frequency would be necessary to get things working properly and to keep them there. 

His design had a frequency seek and lock circuit that handled doing this automatically and I think that at some point it is going to be required that we build them as well.  For now I’m content doing it by hand but just don’t think that is going to be our long term solution.

I’m still trying to get in touch with Dave Lawton but at this point the best news I’ve heard was that he’s been on vacation and very busy and hasn’t had time to do any experimenting or communicating.  I’ll let everyone know if something changes on that front.

While there seems to be very little going on with my experiments, there is a lot going on with different sorts of experiments as I try to figure out all this electrical stuff.  Once I get all this stuff in my head straight I’ll start back up on the specific tests related to the hydrogen production and specific cell construction.  For now, I need to learn a few more things so that we can get to the next level.

 Stay tuned!