Ruhmkorff, Spark, or Ignition Coil

[@MasterIvo]

Thanks, the secondary coil, becomes resonant, so the capacity of the coil is charged. By reducing the capacity of the coil (gap between its windings) , the voltage will rise higher.

[@MasterIvo]

By gounding one side or the other side of the secondary, we can change the polarity of the discharge, and their differences. the positive discharge will be a purple blue spark that can ignite paper. The other negative discharge is a white gas like discharge with a louder noise, and in capable of burning paper. These effects are only seen when the discharge polarity does not change (resonant half wave)

[@gregry111]

very informative and straightforward Thank you.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

+Gary Reed Thanks for the kind comments. You are welcome.

[@alocin110]

Excellent demonstration. Thank you for sharing. Your work is well dedicated. I liked your video.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

You are welcome and thank you for the kind words!

[@devkishukla4950]

Too good, all concepts get cleared Thanks to explain.

[@BaudirenergieDe]

It is not so simple as explained here, how the old Ruhmkorff coils work. You have completely ignored the ratio of the wire length, also the windings were not made then as they are today. The primary to the secondary coil is not matched. You can't just wind a lot of wire onto the secondary coil and expect to get a high voltage and impressive sparks. Your result in relation to the old setups shows how much practical knowledge has been lost in the last 100 years. Anyway, thank you for your effort and your Informations.

[@Xeno_Bardock]

If you connect one pole of a Ruhmkorff Coil to cold water pipe and other pole to a large metal tabletop, you can change the nature of spark from purple-blue to silver-white which is a rare type of spark and your body can feel stinging effects upon amplification. Read more about it in Gerry Vassilatos's book page 30.

[@al-oh8fq]

i like your practical attitude to the physics. you are not just saying and drawing things. you also do practical real world experiments and put them into the motion. are you working as a teacher? if so, it is too bad that such a practical specialist is wasting he's lifetime while you could create some really expensive devices.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

+al Thanks for the kind words about my videos. Yes I am a professor teaching courses in electromagnetic and semiconductor devices.

[@al-oh8fq]

+Michael Melloch have you tried to get a job in lattice semiconductor? or microsemi? or altera/xilinx? or cypress or at least at Silego? they are very interested in semiconductor manufacturing. in fact, their only source of income is creating even faster, even more dense, even more lower noisy, massive arrays of transistors. so. try them. i wouldn't recommend altera though, they had just been acquired by intel and can you imagine how high they keep their noses since then :D

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

+al I actually used to work at Intel. I started working at Intel 40 years ago! So you can see I am too close to retirement to be starting a new career. At Intel I worked on the first microcomputers, the 8748 and the 8051.

[@al-oh8fq]

+Michael Melloch wow...! see?? i don't call people professionals just for that i really sense it and most of the time i am right. last time i started a conversation with one man turned out to be retired aircraft engineer of ~40 years from very respectable company in the US. 8051s are considered as legend. you also must be very good at material science because semiconductor engineering won't see a daylight without that. i also, wanted to learn material science but doing it by myself is unrealistic. cheapest raman spectroscopes start from 15k $ and precision milling machines from roughly the same price. currently i work with fpga s but am very unsatisfied by final results. digital and analog electronics have one big disadvantage, they think think, come up with some result, convert it into a voltage level, and then nothing :) if on a market there is no material that will do whatever you want it to do, there is no place where you would hook that voltage level to do some useful work.

[@al-oh8fq]

+Michael Melloch no? no suggestions for me? on where can i start? learning by myself? or is it a total nonsense?

[@michellegates7083]

Thanks so much for posting this, I like the music, but I would have liked to have heard what this machine sounds like as well; thanks!

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

+Michelle Gates I don't understand. There was no music on the video. If you were referring to the sound of the coil winder that is the sound it makes while winding the coil.

[@d.jensen5153]

@@electricandmagneticfields2314 I'm guessing @michellegates7803 was expecting a dramatic rapid succession of fat noisy sparks. That's what most ignition coil videos feature. She may not have appreciated the tiny individual sparks your device produced, or even noticed them. With less waste of wire, more insulation, a power source with lower internal resistance, and a faster interrupter, she may have gotten what she expected.

[@raydan18]

can this work in the reverse? I have the medium power tesla coil and would like to use it to transfer the energy via one wire over the distance of 25 meters and then step it back down to run the lights, motor etc. Can the winding with the core be used to remove the energy(low voltage side)? and does the transmitter coil has to be in resonance with the receiver coil frequency or it doesn't matter if they are connected by a high voltage wire?

[@turbo3089]

You would happen to know if there is a small spark gap thing about the size of a car fuse or if a car fuse can be converted into one i need a swich that pulses on off on off continuously without stopping unless i flip the main power switch off

[@kreynolds1123]

Many transformers close the magnetic circuit with a high permibility/low reluctance path, the one you demonstrated has a high permibility core but the magnetic path between poles takes a path between pole through the air. How does having an air gap between poles effect how this performs?

[@gregry111]

I understand the use of a laminated core but could one use a nail or other single piece of iron to make a spark coil?

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

+Gary Reed I'm sorry but I don't have a feel for how much energy would be lost in eddy currents in a conducting core instead of generating a voltage across the spark gap. There will be some eddy currents in my core because I am only limiting eddy currents in one direction.

[@gregry111]

+Michael Melloch OK, Thanks

[@alfredoreyesvaldez7401]

I understand that if you had shown the construction plans I would have made a better contribution for those who do not know how to do it.

[@pavlou14]

Just tell me a good reason to use plastic base. Air has high magnetic resistance use some kind of metal to trap as many as you can. You will need and less coil. Another thing you can do it is to turn the secondery coil just above the first. ;)

[@HunzolEv]

Sir how is this different from the arc tesla coil you made? and I don't understand why the effect is of the arc last less than the tesla coil you made afterwards when it has 30k turns! Love your videos sir it inspired me very much.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

For some reason when I click on your other two comments I don't see them. For some reason I can see and respond to this one. I am so glad you love my videos! You are correct, it is the same effect. The only difference is I am mechanically switching the current on and off in this video while in the tesla coil video I am using a circuit that continuously turns the current on and off.

[@vishalpranav9490]

Why have you used a capacitor in parallel with the switch?....what is it used for

[@godparticle3833]

Resonating

[@cayo0o]

hello. can you give the specifications of those wires on primary and secondary ? they look like two different wage. thanks.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

On the primary the wire is 18 AWG and on the secondary the wire is 33 AWG.

[@basileok2222]

This coil is a transformer with an oscillating auto relay, different from today's coil, which has the primary in short with the secondary.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Yes it is very much like a transformer.

[@madhujyatechnical9905]

Induce voltage which characteristics AC or DC plz reply me

[@mohamedsaber1687]

i asked my self same question ,anybody knows please help

[@cosmicyoke]

At first it’s dc but it becomes a damped AC due to the capacitor

[@samrendraroy5341]

Is is safe to touch that spark? And if not then my question is how can that battery can cause damage to us.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

It is not safe. The energy is built up in the magnetic field over time and then all at once discharged in the spark.

[@Slowly_Going_Mad]

Depending on the conditions as little as a milijoule can be fatal. Something that's worth looking into. On a side note as much as five watts can be tolerated for a second or two but still causes injury like burns and nerve damage. Tazers are an excellent example of this in practice.

[@125varma]

Very nice work, thanks for sharing. One question: If I pulse DC into the primary, the secondary will also give DC. Am I correct?

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Life is illusion DC cannot be transferred from the primary to the secondary since a transformer works on the principle of electromagnetic induction, a changing magnetic field causing an electric field. If you apply a pulse, you are not applying a DC signal. This is essentially what I am doing when I push the switch in and out. If the pulse is long, the leading and trailing edges will result in a signal in the secondary, but the signal in the secondary will die down during the middle portion of the long pulse. I hope I understood and addressed your question.

[@125varma]

Michael Melloch Thank you Michael for replying, I appreciate it. I asked this because I was playing with a car ignition coil and when I connected the primary to the DC source, of course nothing happened, but when I disconnected the DC source from primary, the I could see the spark at the terminals of secondary. It seemed like the sparks on the secondary were caused by a unidirectional current. So I concluded that if I pulse DC into the primary, I will get high voltage DC from secondary.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Life is illusion This is essentially what I am doing in the video. I push in the switch and there is a "DC" current flowing in the primary till I let go of the switch and break the current into the primary. This is when I get the spark in the secondary. It will not be a DC voltage in the secondary. It is the high-frequency signal from breaking the current in the primary that gets transformed to the secondary.

[@125varma]

Michael Melloch I'm very new in this field and I really appreciate you taking your time, replying and teaching me. Would you please help me understand why when we apply the DC pulse at the beginning, no current flows in the secondary and it only starts flowing when we collapse the magnetic field in the primary? This tells me that by using DC pulses in such transformers, we could probably go around Lenz's law, since while we are applying the DC current, no current flows in secondary to oppose the magnetic field of the primary...

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Life is illusion There is a current in the secondary on the initial application of the voltage. You don’t see it because it doesn’t lead to a voltage that results in a spark, and conduction current, in the gap (as occurs on the removal of the voltage). In the initial application of the voltage there is conduction current in the wire and a displacement current in the gap. If you applied pulses to the primary and attached the secondary to an oscilloscope, you would see pulses on the output. As you make the input pulse duration longer, you would see the output pulse start to droop. The longer the duration of the input pulse the more droop. Long enough input pulse and the output voltage would droop to zero before the input pulses would fall. Here is an image of such an output pulse, www.butlerwinding.com/pulse-trans-voltage-droop/

[@ryanb1874]

Is the dc flat or pulsed

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

It is when the bias is abruptly removed that the magnetic field collapses and you get a spark. So some form of pulsing is necessary.

[@ryanb1874]

@@electricandmagneticfields2314 what is crazy, is you cannot generate power at 60 hrtz, (3600) rpm directly, at least that's what I heard, that it will turn into some weird unusefull radio waves. Cannot rotate the gen at even a half or a quarter of that either.

[@ryanb1874]

Nevermind. I guess that was bullcrap. They spin between 1800 3600 rpm

[@thomascolvin6754]

Very nice video. I was surprised there was not even a mention of the capacitor value and what it does.

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Yes I should have said something about the capacitor across the primary. It is to prevent a large voltage, and possibly a spark, occurring across the primary when the contact is opened. I don't recall the value of the capacitor. I will find out and add to this reply.

[@thomascolvin6754]

Thanks for the reply and interest in adding this information.

[@mr2octavio]

Can you?

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Sorry, it is a 684 nF capacitor

[@mr2octavio]

Michael Melloch thanks!

[@siminedelcu2874]

Esta es todo !!????

[@markhodgson3045]

fit a interrupter to it and some laden jars

[@upinsmoke1206]

Lol.... he used a tube to roll the primary on left air gap. Pretty much just killed the whole function of it. Makes sense now why spark part of the video hides everything attached to it lol

[@adrianlopez3767]

Que grande lo entendí todo

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

Wonderful!

[@paulopmt1]

Parabéns pelo trabalho! Seu video me inspirou em fazer a minha própria bobina de Ruhmkorff: www.paulotrentin.com.br/eletronica/como-as-coisas-funcionam/criando-uma-bobina-de-inducao-ruhmkorff/

[@truths.stranger5454]

great ignition coil, but not a ruhmkorff coil.

[@williamfox8795]

A 9 volt battery is a poor choice to power this apparatus, as it can’t deliver any significant current. You’d be much better off to use 2 or 3 series connected 18650 Li-ion batteries 🔋 🔋instead…

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

I was going for the simplest thing, and what I had available, to demonstrate a spark coil.

[@benjaminlockhart2792]

dang! that's about a lifetime supply of wire. and just think of the hundreds of these in cars in junkyards!

[@electricandmagneticfields2314]

+Benjamin Lockhart When I decided to built a spark coil, I did not realize how difficult it was going to be. I developed an appreciation into the engineering behind being able to manufacture these.

[@MarkTuson]

Tell me about it. I wound mine by hand with wire I got at a car boot sale. £2 for about three pounds of 36swg? SOLD.