045 An Unusual Wimshurst Machine

[@danpaulisbitski]

I love this guys attitude. He is like a kid in a candy store! God bless.

[@AndreaDingbatt]

This looks like a whole lot of Fun!! Thank you Robert, you are always getting the grey matter working!!

[@AsydApieRnsdRadf]

much appreciation for the work you put in each project ♥

[@Grateful.For.Everything]

This is really cool! Thank You so much for going through all that to show us how to go about it.

[@Ian-k6z]

I enjoyed the video there's a lot more to it than 1st meets the eye.

[@goldenfish1999]

*Learn much about the Wimshurst machine, thanks*

[@realcygnus]

Nifty ! I used to have & copy virtually every type of spark gizmo you can think of. BTW, even just old vinyl albums work good for DIY Wimshurst's. By FAR the simplest AND most effective "non-electric/electronic" high voltage DC static generator I ever made just consisted of some rabbit fur(most synth is fine) rubbing against a spinning 4-5" diameter piece of PVC pipe about 18" long. Use end-caps too with drilled out holes to place a round wooden dowel thru for a shaft, though actual bearings of some kind would prolly be even better but not at all required. The collector was just a piece of 3/4" copper pipe(same length as PVC pipe) adjacent/parallel to the PVC pipe, with a gap of about 1". A thicker walled is prolly preferred?, though no doubt that even a thin walled 1/2" pipe would also "work". On the copper pipe was a strip of ordinary aluminum foil(also same length) about 2" wide but folded in half to 1" just literally electrical taped along the length of the copper pipe. Put as many(100+ish doubled by the folding) randomly oriented & staggered "fingers"(like a comb) cut into the tinfoil strip like half way thru its width, aimed at the junction where the fur rubs the spinning PVC pipe. Technically the tinfoil's fingers are the actual "collector". The Capacitor(Leyden jar) was just a 6-8" diameter round tupperware bowl with aluminum flashing covering the inside & outside of the bowl minus about a healthy 3/4th" from the top. Also get some flexible copper tubing about 1/8th to 1/4" diameter & put a length of it just a little longer than your tupperware bowl is high, thru the tupperware lid. Solder/"put"(even just tape or somehow pressure fit) 2 or 3 lengths of any kind of wire from that center tubing to the inside flashing(Pretty sure even just 1 solid/smooth connection would be fine). Also flatten a portion of another piece of the same thin flexible tubing & connect it to the outside flashing by with tape and/or via rubber-banding it around the outside of tupperware bowl such that it is also electrically connected to the outside flashing. But leave this piece of the thin tubing long enough to bend it into a long & easily adjustable arc over the top of the entire capacitor. Now just get 3 as round of cabinet knobs without sharp edges as you can find. If you can't find any with no sharp edges just do some hand filing/dremel polishing. Sharp edges are typically the enemy with all of these parts & connections. But this design is effective enough that filing/polishing isn't strictly necessary. "Put" 1 knob on either end(whichever is most convenient) of the copper pipe collector near the fur & on both of the other 2 ends of each of the flex tubing ends(connected to the inside & outside) of the capacitor. Place the entire capacitor's center ball/knob very near the ball/knob on the large copper collector pipe near the fur. This is mostly just to see a small spark gap as an indication that it is indeed working. But you could just opt to lose the 1 knob(on copper collector pipe end by the fur) by just directly connecting the large copper collector pipe to the cap's center knob or inside flashing plate with a length of wire instead. But its nice to see that its working(when in motion) just by having those 2 knobs very close to each other instead. Now just play around with the distance between the 2 balls/knobs on the cap itself, by bending that longer outside arc made of the thin tubing. Like any similar contraption the closer they are the more frequent the discharge but shorter the sparks & the further they are seperated the longer the spark(up to some max dist) but it occurs less frequently. Obviously, you also need to build a frame/chassis & a functional hand crank(if not using a motor to spin the PVC pipe) out of wood or PVC or a plastic milk crate or whatever non conductive materials you have on hand. A motor is nice as opposed to hand cranking but either is OK. Also, I'm pretty sure, If I'm remembering all of this OK, that also covering the large spinning PVC pipe with rubber(balloon, floor mat material etc.) may help at least a little, though it works fine without it. I never really tested that, it might have just been a dry day. & I'd guess that the flashing can indeed just be replaced with HVAC tape(like as per this vid). However the total charge/energy may matter on the thickness/total amount of/mass of all of the metal involved, at least to some extent, as well as just the surface area of the cap plates alone. & surely the type of & thickness of the tupperware/dielectric plastic is rather significant. But just play around with whatever you have handy. Anyway, such a gizmo can easily produce 6-8"+ sparks about once per second consistently(even in humidity) !

[@DanielGBenesScienceShows]

Nice description of what is definitely a unique electrostatic machine. I could picture it in my head.

[@jazzophis]

I would love to see a video of this running. I have been working on a van de graaff that I could do a lot of adjustments to to try and find the most efficient setup as I couldn't find much info on ideal brush distance etc. Also wanted to test having a sort of center tap for it to ground and have one roller have positive and the other negative in reference to ground. What you made may be easier to start with. I have had trouble with building voltage on all of my prototypes probably from leakage to my work bench in some way. I have it set on a large PVC tube with a large 12" metal garden ball that does not have a seam on it. Thought this would be the cheapest option that could build the most voltage.

[@realcygnus]

@@jazzophis I gave that particular milkcrate gizmo among many others to my neighbors son & little cuz when I moved in 94 & had to downsize ! I'm sure I'd at least have a pic had it not been 30 years ago. Ironically, I was thinking that even if I had a vid, youtube comments tend to hate links. Anyway, yup leakage is the enemy. Thats mostly what I meant about effective, the charge not bleeding off faster than you can store or use it. Although obviously different than a Van De graaff, I definitely remember grounding the outside plate of the cap & it making no noticeable difference whatsoever which was surprising. Ha good Idea. I never did manage to find a practical/cheap suitable dome for a DIY Van De Graaff but I did mess about with much wider bands & roller types & brushes & such with the dome I had but surprisingly none were any better if even as good as my purchased medium sized guy. The only thing I'd wonder off hand is, is your dome thick enough ? Like I said regarding the flashing, it might not just be a matter of surface area alone. Or I could also imagine it being too big OR small(size or mass) for the particular rate of charge etc. Anyway, If you do go with a similar fur type, I did always want to try 3 copper pipes/tinfoil comb collectors(connected to a single ball/knob on one side) & 3 fur slabs staggered @ 120 DEG apart around the spinning PVC drum, NOT that it even needed it. TBH I'm convinced it was mostly just all about the dielectric properties/thickness of the caps plastic & perhaps the flashing dimensions/mass etc. as there was never any issue collecting a steady charge from the rubbing area with even slight motion. It must just be a low bleed rate setup. As far as yours goes, they say the skinning effect is all about the conductors surface itself but the actual amount of conductor material prolly matters is some significant ways. I'm not even sure what established theory might have to say about that but just something to consider. & what really makes me think that too is that it would matter as far as capacitance tuning on a tesla coil for instance. Good luck ! Hit me up with a vid, nifty stuff indeed.

[@jazzophis]

@@realcygnus That is interesting. It just might be too thin, I was just looking at surface area myself. That ball is very thin, and I no idea what metal it even is. I wonder if the mass of it has to do with the edges you will end up with more than the material thickness? It is hard to find answers to most of my questions on this. That is mostly why I'm making one. I work with high voltage equipment for electrostatic precipitators and know sharp edges are no good and make you spark over much easier with the same air gap. I did cut a small hose and put it over the sharp edges I cut, but as I did it, I had a sinking feeling it would be of no help. I feel like the only thing that might work with that is to weld a thick metal ring to the edges of the hole to eliminate any sharp edges. The thing is, though, I am a terrible welder and only have a very cheap stick welder, and that metal is way too thin to weld. I am glad you mentioned the mass, though. I think before I move on, I will do some tests on the sphere to see if it has any chance of holding much charge. I also wanted to test different combs like you mentioned but have them with fine tuning adjustments on some all thread to see what works best. I have seen people with good sparking that had a decent size gap and even with the comb touching. The first one I was trying with was from a welding cable with very fine braided wires that I spread out, hoping the more sharp points the better.

[@realcygnus]

@@jazzophis Right, they got rolls of CF(carbon fiber) these days which is prolly a good choice for brushes, in some cases. Was it in this vid ? where I heard "But you have to burn off the coating" ? Anyway, imagine trying to get info about all of these things before the internet was what it is. All we had was whatever you might find in a Library & random magazine articles & such. But still don't believe everything you see & read, especially since the advent of AI assisted results. IKR, I always wanted & still do want a little MIG and/or especially a TIG welder myself but gas tanks & everything has to be an expensive hassle. Even though I don't tinker nearly as much as I used to. Yea just play around with distances & every variable you can think of. Regarding collector/combs//brushes generally, "near" is all you need but in the wimshurst case the brushes need to touch BC its coming from another conductor as opposed to insulator/region of space. More sharp points are better in some cases, but perhaps on a VDG that can serve to help bleed off charge, which is prolly why the combs are typically small. Whereas on a fur gizmo you got that whole area where it rubs the cylinder to catch, if you know what I mean. Keep me updated.

[@johnsullivan6560]

Awesome! I love these devices. Thank you for another great video!

[@DanielGBenesScienceShows]

Robert, that’s a gorgeous and fun machine!! But I would have LOVED to see you widen the spark-gap to test its full potential. Of course, that would inevitably uncover “opportunities”, as stressing a machine always does. Perhaps in an update video?

[@MichaelRada-INDUSTRY50]

thank you Robert, great video

[@thesustainabilitysoonerchannel]

Robert, this steampunk phase of yours is both fascinating and joyous to behold. It's marvelous to see how you're using modern and easily obtainable materials to harness Victorian era technologies. Thx mate!

[@professorfukyu744]

Not steam. Electricity. This is closer to retro-punk or something like that. Kinda the electric motor equivalent of nuclear tech in fallout.

[@thatwontwork9046]

Some really great info in here thanks for sharing!!

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

Robert you are a mad scientist! I love your work! You teach with Charisma & passion. When you love what you do, it's not really considered work is it? You make science a blast!😎👍

[@baleylavarta2573]

What are your thoughts on a wind driven wimshurst machine? Wherein a wind turbine drives a transmission to then turn the wimshurst machine.

[@lorenbush8876]

My favorite wimshurst type machine is the Testatika, if it really puts out what it claims it is really cool.

[@whatthefunction9140]

There should be one of these in every house

[@francescotrevisan4453]

interesting, I had also been wondering about supporting the plates from the edge. Great to see your build. But it looks like the actual efficiency of the machine is quite low, the sparks are very short considering the diameter of the disks. Fun video, tks

[@haroldkeener3115]

Robert; I love your content and your methods very much. A quick question; Can I do a fractal capacitor on a whimshurst to produce usable power?

[@Fusimester]

As it slowly began to roll, I immediately thought of the stargate. 🙂

[@dkdyker]

great work, can you take the energy and power leds or something Robert.?

[@g_glop]

The coating on carbon fibers intended for composites is called sizing.

[@Theowlwas]

I swear I saw this video like three days ago.. but the thing up there says it came out 7 hours ago... I'm in a time loop!

[@TheMichaellathrop]

So I am imagining a wood fireplace with a heat exchange driving a sterling engine both to turn a fan to help cool it's self and heat the room but also to drive a wimshurst and maybe sneak in a thermal electric layer in the sterling... not sure what I'd try to power with such an unwieldy monstrosity but I imagine it would look awesome ticking along above a wood fire... really more of an art piece than any kind of practical mad science.

[@dannybanford6386]

What kind of output will it give.

[@zinckensteel]

at 16:27 I think I see a major limiting flaw in your design that could be easily corrected. The connection to the inner foil of the capacitor, is it running through that angle bracket and bolt? Did you have to carve away the outer foil to clear the connection? That is probably a point of great leakage, limiting the output voltage.

[@VeniceInventors]

They're not touching, if you look closely at 14:00 you'll see the cut-out around the bolt, which he mentions shortly after. Otherwise it probably wouldn't make any spark at all.

[@zinckensteel]

@@VeniceInventors It doesn't have to touch, it just needs to be close by with sharp edges to bleed away charge. His generator should make sparks several inches long at minimum if set up properly.

[@zinckensteel]

@@VeniceInventors The connection to the inner foil should go through the middle of the top cap, just as is done on a standard leyden jar, to minimize the electric field gradients.

[@VeniceInventors]

@@zinckensteel I see what you mean. And it makes sense if the goal is to get the highest voltage possible. Maybe Robert intentionally limited the voltage by reducing the spark gap, to make it easier and safer to replicate the device. Or maybe it's the other way around and it didn't build enough of a charge to make bigger sparks, so he reduced the gap?

[@footstoolofgodflatearth2933]

How would you calculate how many disks you need for X Volts or X amps?

[@Ian-k6z]

@TNT Omnibus I want to make a static wand would one of these power that? I could use some help I'm not familiar with static electricity.

[@GeronAlexandr]

Гарна робота! Молодець!

[@quantumenergysolutions9128]

Hi Mate, Hope you are ok, Can you use your Gr ink instead of aluminium, or painted on the Aluminium?

[@Eaglepass]

a Time machine in peacocks brilliance

[@jasongooden917]

Zod: Release the Wimshurst Machine.

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

You can continue to charge the plate over and over and over, building up a charge until it cannot hold anymore ( in layman's terms) However, if you run an electrode from the backside of the plate, up inside a metal sphere, the charge on the plate will transfer inside the sphere. Then you can grow the charge into an almost infinite amount. It will become a very lethal charge! Again Robert In layman's terms. 👍 😁

[@tammineuman5983]

How many sparks per second are you getting, at the gap? You should expand upon that, and fashion a split ring to set across the room, and show what else is happening. I suspect some people would be pleasantly surprised.

[@user-vd2tp4dq6p]

If you painted the foil sections with your graphene paint, except for the brush contact portions, would it behave as a much larger unit? Sort of a spinning wheel of capacitors with many square meters of area instead of dozens of square inches.

[@raccoonvallie]

Didn't I already seen this before

[@Sye.Y.T]

I was thinking the same, did he post the same video twice... or something else is going on.

[@jimwi9592]

Robert mate big fan, been watching following you for years. I see people making these machines all over the net but have not seen any one power anything with it. Can it be used to charge battery's or big cap bank maybe run though a step down transformer for a usable voltage. Would love to see hear your thoughts' on how this mite work. Maybe we can hook the spark up to the fence to keep the cows in. LOL

[@adventureisoutthere8064]

can this energy generated be captured into high voltage capacitors, if so, can the stored energy then run a simple dc motor to run the machine as a closed loop as the torque needed to rotate the machine should require a small low amp motor.

[@middleway1885]

It would be interesting to use the electrical charges for Electro-culture...

[@danvasii9884]

Can a wind turbine be coupled with a Wimshurst machine and the output passed trough a transformer to turn high voltage low current into lower voltage higher current? in order to replace classic wind turbine generators?

[@intergalacticmailbox]

No.

[@danvasii9884]

@@intergalacticmailbox Why?

[@intergalacticmailbox]

@@danvasii9884 Wimshurst machines develop high voltage/low current static Direct Current. Transformers recquire Alternating Current. The power generated by the Wimshurst machine is very low- similar to walking across carpeting and getting a small shock when touching a metal object. Although fascinating, the machine is not a practical power source.

[@danvasii9884]

@@intergalacticmailbox I see, thank you for explanations...

[@jondelaire]

Check out the Integratron in the high desert of the village of Landers California north of Palm Springs. It was a building designed to not only do this very thing, but harvests the earth magnetic field to created a radio oscillator of some type. Was supposed to be a giant lakovsky oscillator to heal peoples DNA supposedly.

[@marinadizon2720]

Search terms - Paul Baumann Testatika Generator Methernitha Group Linden Switzerland

[@William_Hada]

Great design having the bearings on the edges rather than on a center axel !

[@jigold22571]

Absolutely ❤😊

[@kyobydoby8942]

But what the heck does it actually do? Can I charge my cell phone?

[@DanielGBenesScienceShows]

Just in case your question is legit… It’s a high-voltage electrostatic induction generator developed in the 1800’s that could be used to power things from that era, including gas-filled discharge tubes, X-Ray tubes, Crookes tubes, Geissler tubes, cathode ray tubes (which led to radar and TV), spark-gap radio and telegraphy, etc.. As well as things that people still like to play with today, including all the above mentioned devices, PLUS lasers, particle accelerators, metal vacuum sputtering/deposition and scintillation devices, etc.. Definitely do NOT get your cell phone anywhere near a device that produces high-voltage and can accelerate high-energy particles. - To better answer your question: It’s freakin’ gorgeous and produces high-voltage sparks out of thin air! What more does it have to do? 😃

[@GHILLIESARCADEANDMORE]

Cool

[@jussikankinen9409]

Make L shaped copper

[@HasanAkinci-l4z]

Versuchen Sie mit deutsche Untertitel senden.

[@AndreaDingbatt]

Early, but only 2nd!!😊❤

[@lynnwamego3337]

Could you use "carbon felt" as the contact brushes ??