FIRST THINGS
FIRST. As President Nixon once said, "Let me make this
perfectly clear."
I do NOT believe anyone is going to build a working perpetual motion machine in the foreseeable future. They may get "that close", but being close is only valid in handgrenades and horse shoes. And people have been trying to build one for thousands of years. So good luck doing it.
Before we get into this, please read this Wikipedia article about perpetual motion so we are all thinking about the same thing. Please note the paragraph , "Recent examples" about half way through the article. Over-unity, free energy etc implies perpetual motion. Remember that as you read the rest of this section.
Many experimenters build pulse driven motors which they've been led to believe produce all the "free energy" you can use.
A little [real] theory is in order here concerning producing over-unity.
Over-unity is NOT getting only more voltage out of a device than you input into the device. Over-unity means the device will run on it's own with NO external input once it is put into motion! In other words, the device creates more output power than the input power required to run the device.
You may want to read up on back EMF before we go any further.
When you pass current through a coil, you create an electromagnet. The electromagnet produces a magnetic field through the core of the coil and the surrounding air or material. When you suddenly remove the driving current through a non-resonant coil, a narrow high voltage spike is created by the coil as the magnetic field collapses.
While it may not be entirely correct, I will call the spike voltage, "back EMF".
If not suppressed, the back EMF voltage can be many times higher than the original driving voltage. The voltage spike is normally very short in duration and does not produce anywhere near the power as the original voltage and current required to produced the voltage spike. This is a very important point and can be easily proven (as I show later).
Examples of spike producing coils are car relays, door bell buzzers/chimes or just about any multi turn coil. Normally this voltage spike is suppressed with a "snubber" circuit consisting of a resistor and a capacitor wired in series or a diode across the coil terminals. Sometimes only a resistor is used. Snubbers are used because the voltage spike can cause damage to relay contacts and/or solid state circuitry.
Some builders use reed relays for drive current switching. They can see sparking inside the reed switch and wonder why they fail at low current even though the switch is rated at many times higher current than the current they are passing through it. The answer is that the back EMF voltage from the coil(s) they are driving with the reed switch is destroying the switch. The builder should try a snubber across the relay. Start with 100 ohms and .01 mfd in series across the coil leads. Unfortunately the snubber causes a little power to be dissapated in it while doing it's job.
In general, high current welds the switch contacts together. High voltage slowly vaporizes the contacts until they are destroyed. If you look at a NE-2 neon bulb or even a normal automotive bulb that has been run for a very long time you will see that there is a black coating on the inside surface of the glass. That is the vaporized metal of the electrodes or filament that has been deposited on the cooler glass over time.
Many builders of pulse driven motors use a diode(s) to rectify the back EMF to charge batteries. When using a high grade storage capacitor the stored voltage will be many times higher than the input voltage to the motor IF there is no load placed on the capacitor. I've measured stored voltages as high as 35 volts while running my motor on 5 volts. My DVM has 10 megohms input resistance so the load is rather small.
If you put a small load across the storage capacitor (even a 10,000 ohm resistor) while the device is operating you will find that the voltage drops very quickly to a lower value. You will not be able to load the rectified back EMF voltage to the same power level as the input drive power to the device at the time you are loading the back EMF. i.e. as you increase the output load, the input power to the device goes UP. And the power input goes up in a greater percentage than the output power goes up. That's what I call "a self eating watermelon."
Here's a quick experiment to show how loading the storage capacitor affects the voltage.
If you have an old fashioned voltmeter (not a DVM) with an analog meter face, such as a Simpson 260, set it to read 50 DC volts [or more] and read the voltage on the back EMF capacitor with no other load connected to the capacitor while the motor is running. Then set the meter to the next lower DC voltage scale and read the voltage again. You'll find the readings aren't the same. Now set the meter to read the next lower scale and read it again.
Question:
Why are you getting different readings?
Answer:
You are loading the capacitor with lower and lower resistance (ohms) as you change down from one scale to the next.
Read the fine print on your meter face and see how many ohms per DC volt (full scale) the meter presents on the test leads. The typical old Simpson I have is 20,000 ohms per volt (full scale). So if you went from a 50 Vdc scale (1 megohm load) to the 10 Vdc scale (200,000 ohm load) you will immediately see the affect of loading the back EMF voltage.
My motor has an equivalent load resistance of ~520 ohms at 2 volts. Try loading your back EMF ciruit with that and see what voltage you get!
Because some builders can measure back EMF voltages higher than the voltage required to run the motor (typically with DVMs that have 10 megohms input impedance) they claim they have an over-unity (or whatever fancy name they want to call it) device. And some people come up with some very imaginary descriptions of how it works too.
Redefining already established scientific terms to suit your purpose (or not knowing what the real term means) is bad form and will usually just results in confusion and does not change the basic laws of physics.
Yes you can slow charge batteries to a higher voltage than the input drive voltage but again, you are using more power to run the device AND charge the battery than the device delivers to the battery. That is not free energy. You will get more efficiency by just charging the battery directly from a wall wart DC power source.
A quick test of an over-unity design would be to power the motor from an external power supply or solar cell and have the back EMF circuit output connected to the terminal where the external supply voltage is connected to the motor. Get the motor running up to speed and then disconnect the external power source. If the motor continues to run for months/years then you will be a rich person. Plea$e keep me in mind a$ the one that sugge$ted the te$t. ;-)
Let me show you the results of performing that test on my motor. I devised a test to measure the power supply current, the actual current into the motor and the rectified back EMF current.
The following tests were performed:
Notes:
Observations:
Conclusions:
Final thoughts:
Using back EMF voltage is NOT going to give you real free energy no matter how much you would like it to be true. It's not free if you have to input more power INTO the device than you get power OUT of the device.
So you believers can come up with all the gobbley goop explanations, fancy names and/or descriptions that don't represent real science, new [mystic] science, Fogal devices and even numerology if that's what turns you on. But just remember, "There's no free lunch." (Ask your grandfather where that saying came from.)
On the other hand, do use your motor etc as a learning experience. There's lots of [real] science going on in that motor.
That is certainly enough on perpetual motion. Let's get back to the real world and consider a motor that runs at very low input power. How 'bout 0.6 volt input at 0.295 ma. for 0.177 milliwatts input power. That's a tremendous 0.000,000,237 HP if the motor was 100% efficient (which of course it isn't)!
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I do NOT believe anyone is going to build a working perpetual motion machine in the foreseeable future. They may get "that close", but being close is only valid in handgrenades and horse shoes. And people have been trying to build one for thousands of years. So good luck doing it.
Before we get into this, please read this Wikipedia article about perpetual motion so we are all thinking about the same thing. Please note the paragraph , "Recent examples" about half way through the article. Over-unity, free energy etc implies perpetual motion. Remember that as you read the rest of this section.
Many experimenters build pulse driven motors which they've been led to believe produce all the "free energy" you can use.
A little [real] theory is in order here concerning producing over-unity.
Over-unity is NOT getting only more voltage out of a device than you input into the device. Over-unity means the device will run on it's own with NO external input once it is put into motion! In other words, the device creates more output power than the input power required to run the device.
You may want to read up on back EMF before we go any further.
When you pass current through a coil, you create an electromagnet. The electromagnet produces a magnetic field through the core of the coil and the surrounding air or material. When you suddenly remove the driving current through a non-resonant coil, a narrow high voltage spike is created by the coil as the magnetic field collapses.
While it may not be entirely correct, I will call the spike voltage, "back EMF".
If not suppressed, the back EMF voltage can be many times higher than the original driving voltage. The voltage spike is normally very short in duration and does not produce anywhere near the power as the original voltage and current required to produced the voltage spike. This is a very important point and can be easily proven (as I show later).
Examples of spike producing coils are car relays, door bell buzzers/chimes or just about any multi turn coil. Normally this voltage spike is suppressed with a "snubber" circuit consisting of a resistor and a capacitor wired in series or a diode across the coil terminals. Sometimes only a resistor is used. Snubbers are used because the voltage spike can cause damage to relay contacts and/or solid state circuitry.
Some builders use reed relays for drive current switching. They can see sparking inside the reed switch and wonder why they fail at low current even though the switch is rated at many times higher current than the current they are passing through it. The answer is that the back EMF voltage from the coil(s) they are driving with the reed switch is destroying the switch. The builder should try a snubber across the relay. Start with 100 ohms and .01 mfd in series across the coil leads. Unfortunately the snubber causes a little power to be dissapated in it while doing it's job.
In general, high current welds the switch contacts together. High voltage slowly vaporizes the contacts until they are destroyed. If you look at a NE-2 neon bulb or even a normal automotive bulb that has been run for a very long time you will see that there is a black coating on the inside surface of the glass. That is the vaporized metal of the electrodes or filament that has been deposited on the cooler glass over time.
Many builders of pulse driven motors use a diode(s) to rectify the back EMF to charge batteries. When using a high grade storage capacitor the stored voltage will be many times higher than the input voltage to the motor IF there is no load placed on the capacitor. I've measured stored voltages as high as 35 volts while running my motor on 5 volts. My DVM has 10 megohms input resistance so the load is rather small.
If you put a small load across the storage capacitor (even a 10,000 ohm resistor) while the device is operating you will find that the voltage drops very quickly to a lower value. You will not be able to load the rectified back EMF voltage to the same power level as the input drive power to the device at the time you are loading the back EMF. i.e. as you increase the output load, the input power to the device goes UP. And the power input goes up in a greater percentage than the output power goes up. That's what I call "a self eating watermelon."
Here's a quick experiment to show how loading the storage capacitor affects the voltage.
If you have an old fashioned voltmeter (not a DVM) with an analog meter face, such as a Simpson 260, set it to read 50 DC volts [or more] and read the voltage on the back EMF capacitor with no other load connected to the capacitor while the motor is running. Then set the meter to the next lower DC voltage scale and read the voltage again. You'll find the readings aren't the same. Now set the meter to read the next lower scale and read it again.
Question:
Why are you getting different readings?
Answer:
You are loading the capacitor with lower and lower resistance (ohms) as you change down from one scale to the next.
Read the fine print on your meter face and see how many ohms per DC volt (full scale) the meter presents on the test leads. The typical old Simpson I have is 20,000 ohms per volt (full scale). So if you went from a 50 Vdc scale (1 megohm load) to the 10 Vdc scale (200,000 ohm load) you will immediately see the affect of loading the back EMF voltage.
My motor has an equivalent load resistance of ~520 ohms at 2 volts. Try loading your back EMF ciruit with that and see what voltage you get!
Because some builders can measure back EMF voltages higher than the voltage required to run the motor (typically with DVMs that have 10 megohms input impedance) they claim they have an over-unity (or whatever fancy name they want to call it) device. And some people come up with some very imaginary descriptions of how it works too.
Unfortunately scientific
over-unity is based on power, not voltage alone.
Voltage
is only one half of the equation to measure power. Power (in watts) = voltage x amps.
Redefining already established scientific terms to suit your purpose (or not knowing what the real term means) is bad form and will usually just results in confusion and does not change the basic laws of physics.
Yes you can slow charge batteries to a higher voltage than the input drive voltage but again, you are using more power to run the device AND charge the battery than the device delivers to the battery. That is not free energy. You will get more efficiency by just charging the battery directly from a wall wart DC power source.
A quick test of an over-unity design would be to power the motor from an external power supply or solar cell and have the back EMF circuit output connected to the terminal where the external supply voltage is connected to the motor. Get the motor running up to speed and then disconnect the external power source. If the motor continues to run for months/years then you will be a rich person. Plea$e keep me in mind a$ the one that sugge$ted the te$t. ;-)
Let me show you the results of performing that test on my motor. I devised a test to measure the power supply current, the actual current into the motor and the rectified back EMF current.
The following tests were performed:
- The first test was to get a reference reading of the motor running with the back EMF feedback not connected.
- The second test was run with the back EMF feedback circuit (L1 and D1) connected as shown in the schematic below.
- As a final test I connected the output of A3 to a variable external resistive load to simulate charging a 2 volt battery (a single cell lead-acid battery reaches full charge at ~2.1 volts). The other lead of the load was connected to ground.
This is the raw
data and some Excel calculations that I observed with my motor running
from a 2 volt power supply.
Notes:
- Notice that the power requirement of the motor goes UP (A2) when the back EMF circuitry is working. This is to be expected since the circuit (which includes the motor portion) has to do more work while delivering the back EMF rectified voltage to the load (the motor in this case).
- Notice that the motor RPMs went down when the back EMF is delivering power because the motor is working harder with the back EMF load connected.
- If you were only monitoring the power supply current (A1) you would be mislead into thinking the current to the motor had gone DOWN with the back EMF voltage connected to the motor. This is simply not true. The total motor current is a combination of the power supply AND the back EMF currents.
- If the back EMF is connected to the motor and the power supply voltage lead is disconnected the motor stops almost immediately (as indicated by observing the base and drive coil wave form as displayed on a Tektronix dual trace oscilloscope).
- The external load simulated a single cell lead-acid battery being charged at 2 volts.
Observations:
- If a 0.33 farad super capacitor is connected to the supply leads at the power supply the motor will run for quite awhile after turning the power supply OFF. But this is to be expected since the super capacitor acts like a low capacity battery. But after several minutes or so the motor stops running before the voltage drops below 0.8 volts even though the motor will run continuously on 0.6 volts when connected to the power supply.
- At less than 0.8 volts I do see the base voltage trigger waveform rising high enough to trigger the transistor but the collector voltage does not change enough to cause base feedback which in turn causes the voltage spike to not be present. I suspect the super capacitor just can't supply enough peak current at that point to cause proper feedback to allow the blocking oscillator to keep running. But the main point is that the motor does stop running.
- In addition if you use an ordinary aluminum electrolytic capacitor vs a high quality tantalum capacitor as the back EMF filter you will find that the unloaded voltage is lower with the aluminum capacitor. This is due to the lower equivalent series resistance (ESR) of the aluminum capacitior.
Conclusions:
- When the back EMF circuit is connected to the motor, the power supply current is reduced by 38.5% but the motor input current goes UP by 27.6%. Let me repeat that, the motor current goes UP, not DOWN. Since meter A1 is still showing that the power suppy is still supplying current (at the preset 2 volts) to the circuit the back EMF circuit is NOT supplying all the power the motor needs to run. So much for "over unity".
- When the back EMF circuit is connected to an external load which simulating a single cell lead-acid battery being charged at 2 volts, the input current to the motor goes UP by 4.21 ma (for a total of 8.05 ma) to deliver 2.92 ma to the external load. The total input power to the motor is 2V x 8.05 ma = 16.1 milliwatts and the output power delivered to the battery is 5.84 milliwatts. The efficiency is (5.84 / 16.1) * 100 = 36.3%. That my friend is not exceptional efficiency and certainly not over unity either.
Final thoughts:
Using back EMF voltage is NOT going to give you real free energy no matter how much you would like it to be true. It's not free if you have to input more power INTO the device than you get power OUT of the device.
So you believers can come up with all the gobbley goop explanations, fancy names and/or descriptions that don't represent real science, new [mystic] science, Fogal devices and even numerology if that's what turns you on. But just remember, "There's no free lunch." (Ask your grandfather where that saying came from.)
On the other hand, do use your motor etc as a learning experience. There's lots of [real] science going on in that motor.
That is certainly enough on perpetual motion. Let's get back to the real world and consider a motor that runs at very low input power. How 'bout 0.6 volt input at 0.295 ma. for 0.177 milliwatts input power. That's a tremendous 0.000,000,237 HP if the motor was 100% efficient (which of course it isn't)!
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Return to home page