Condenser/ Capacitor

[stdsch40]

I’m here late the second wave and don’t feel like saying much more and glad I was late lol. Physics and ignition theory abd ee 101 can’t be explained here, some know it others don’t and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. An electronic device cant create energy that’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it but allow others different opinions it’s a free country.

John T

Energy comes in many forms. Take the plasma at the end of a Tig torch with argon gas, and explain how 20vdc and 50amps can melt steel in a small spot. The 'heat' of the plasma far exceed the resistive electrical energy alone. Lots of physics yet to be discovered esp 'plasma'.

 

[will-max dairy]

I've made my own set up, for experimtal purposes, using 12vdc tractor coil, 12v battery, 20ampDC solid state relay (SSR), spark plug, and Arduino nano to generate semi continouous spark at the plug. No capacitor/condenser was required using the solid state 'switch'. The SSR worked fine being switched on and off at 0.1msec intervals from the arduino nano. Not sure a lesser amp rated SSR would do the job cuz I didn't have one. My set up worked like a charm.

Run it for a hundred or a thousand hours... maybe it will work... maybe it won't...

I've designed flyback power supplies with solid state transistors on the primary. They switch at 100KHz to 500KHz, roughly 10 to 50 times your repetition rate. If you don't have a snubber... you'll fry your transistor after a while.

The wildcard is the possibly resonant nature of a tractor's ignition. If the switching can happen at resonance (often at zero voltage or zero current points)... then maaaaaaaayyyyybeeeee you can get lucky and get some more life out of it... but I doubt it. The switching frequency is forced by the points and not allowed to resonate.

The other wildcard is... I have no clue what the transient or pulse withstand is of your solid state relay... maybe you have a beast that can take hundreds of volts from drain to source... or collector to emitter... whatever the technology is.

 

[will-max dairy]

Energy comes in many forms. Take the plasma at the end of a Tig torch with argon gas, and explain how 20vdc and 50amps can melt steel in a small spot. The 'heat' of the plasma far exceed the resistive electrical energy alone. Lots of physics yet to be discovered esp 'plasma'.

put your plasma torch in a room and run it continuously as a heat source... maybe you've discovered cold fusion...

 

[will-max dairy]

Another view is that the condenser, being in parallel with the points, it provides a momentary path for coil current to continue to flow as points open & having this alternate path, reduces the arc across the points. I made a video awhile back (~5 tears) using a 55 microFarad cap vs the normal 0.22 microFarad unit and the engine ran. Disconnected the cap while engine running and engine died....reconnect during coast down and it restarts. If you can't hear the sound, engine run, not run, most is lost.

https://imgur.com/m84PvvB

...and a visual of same:

https://imgur.com/PlWz4qF

https://imgur.com/TwoB4Ob

cool demo!

 

[stdsch40]

Run it for a hundred or a thousand hours... maybe it will work... maybe it won't

It does work. 1000 hrs I don't know cuz I didn't try it, but the SSR is easily capable of millions of hrs of continuous switching.
What you seem to be saying is that transistorized ignition systems don't and can't work, yet I have had many a motorcycle and car with it. Weird.

 

[stdsch40]

put your plasma torch in a room and run it continuously as a heat source... maybe you've discovered cold fusion...

Plasma (being ionized gas) has properties that differ from straight gases, the radiative heat transfer is very different with a plasma. Going back to work for now. Have fun.

 

[will-max dairy]

It does work. 1000 hrs I don't know cuz I didn't try it, but the SSR is easily capable of millions of hrs of continuous switching.

Don't know...

The SSR may have it's own built in snubbing/reverse protection that would take the place of the condenser. I think that "easily capable of millions of hours" is a little high for an estimate... but in an ignition application, I would take an MTBF of, say, 10,000 hours... since that's far superior to the old mechanical points... and these dicey condensers that we get now.

 

[stdsch40]

Don't know...

The SSR may have it's own built in snubbing/reverse protection that would take the place of the condenser. I think that "easily capable of millions of hours" is a little high for an estimate... but in an ignition application, I would take an MTBF of, say, 10,000 hours... since that's far superior to the old mechanical points... and these dicey condensers that we get now.

The SSR's that I like are an epoxy sealed box, not sure exactly the specs on them but millions of switching operations at rated frequency are easily obtained. No exageration on my part.

 

[will-max dairy]

Don't know...

The SSR may have it's own built in snubbing/reverse protection that would take the place of the condenser. I think that "easily capable of millions of hours" is a little high for an estimate... but in an ignition application, I would take an MTBF of, say, 10,000 hours... since that's far superior to the old mechanical points... and these dicey condensers that we get now.

Just for fun, I looked up solid state relays.

The operating units is in millions of operating hours.

The commercial, ground fixed listing says a failure rate of 0.001 failures per million operating hours! I looked at the source (23034-000)... it said there was a population of 680,000 with 600,000 million accumulated hours. That would work out to a million hours (112 years -ish) per sample. I'm not sure how anybody could have 112 years of data per sample on solid state relays that were invented 50 -ish years ago. (I actually should look into this... as I think the data needs correction)

Moving applications, such as aircraft (the A environment) have a failure rate of 739 per million hours... which would equate to an MTBF of about 1300 to 1400 hours...

Either way, still better than points.

Looking into the details was fun... as there were listings for SSRs made by Allis Chalmers.

Also, for fun... I looked at capacitors, fixed, paper... which had a failure rate below 1 per million hours...

So why would condensers be taking a crap on tractors after a few hundred hours? Electrical Stress? Heat? Low Quality? Vibration?... prolly all of the above.

 

[JMOR]

Just for fun, I looked up solid state relays.

The operating units is in millions of operating hours.

The commercial, ground fixed listing says a failure rate of 0.001 failures per million operating hours! I looked at the source (23034-000)... it said there was a population of 680,000 with 600,000 million accumulated hours. That would work out to a million hours (112 years -ish) per sample. I'm not sure how anybody could have 112 years of data per sample on solid state relays that were invented 50 -ish years ago. (I actually should look into this... as I think the data needs correction)

Moving applications, such as aircraft (the A environment) have a failure rate of 739 per million hours... which would equate to an MTBF of about 1300 to 1400 hours...

Either way, still better than points.

Looking into the details was fun... as there were listings for SSRs made by Allis Chalmers.

Also, for fun... I looked at capacitors, fixed, paper... which had a failure rate below 1 per million hours...

So why would condensers be taking a crap on tractors after a few hundred hours? Electrical Stress? Heat? Low Quality? Vibration?... prolly all of the above.

And I expect some are falsely accused.

 

[will-max dairy]

And I expect some are falsely accused.

True... and failures right out of the box would be infantile failures/defects that would never get into the data sets from where this data comes from... which is annual maintenance of existing fleets of various stuff...

 

[Janicholson]

Energy comes in many forms. Take the plasma at the end of a Tig torch with argon gas, and explain how 20vdc and 50amps can melt steel in a small spot. The 'heat' of the plasma far exceed the resistive electrical energy alone. Lots of physics yet to be discovered esp 'plasma'.

No arc is directly associated with the Plasma only heated working gas the arc is inside the torch head only. the ground passes a tiny signal voltage through the arc as a signal to keep the torch head making plasma. And in automation to keep the tip at a given distance based on that pilot voltage setting. Jim

 

[will-max dairy]

I've made my own set up, for experimtal purposes, using 12vdc tractor coil, 12v battery, 20ampDC solid state relay (SSR), spark plug, and Arduino nano to generate semi continouous spark at the plug. No capacitor/condenser was required using the solid state 'switch'. The SSR worked fine being switched on and off at 0.1msec intervals from the arduino nano. Not sure a lesser amp rated SSR would do the job cuz I didn't have one. My set up worked like a charm.

After all of my commenting... I should say... this was still a neat experiment that you did!

 

[stdsch40]

After all of my commenting... I should say... this was still a neat experiment that you did!

I was testing to see if I could make a spark ignitor for a natural gas or propane burner.
The thing is that the arc across the contact points is not desirable for the simple reason the metal points get burnt away in time due to the arcing. So get rid of the points and get rid of the condenser and you have a transitorized ignition. The SSR 'on' signal only needs to be 3vdc, so a microprocessor or pick up coils on the crank shaft can do that. The transient spike in the primary coil feeds back to the coil if its a harmonic of the secondary, reduced energy waste.

 

[Fritz Maurer]

I was testing to see if I could make a spark ignitor for a natural gas or propane burner.
The thing is that the arc across the contact points is not desirable for the simple reason the metal points get burnt away in time due to the arcing. So get rid of the points and get rid of the condenser and you have a transitorized ignition. The SSR 'on' signal only needs to be 3vdc, so a microprocessor or pick up coils on the crank shaft can do that. The transient spike in the primary coil feeds back to the coil if it's a harmonic of the secondary, reduced energy waste.

If you arc at the points you have other problems.

Properly operating points system will not have any arc. Maybe a feeble strand now and then ... have to be in the dark to see it.

 

[stdsch40]

If you arc at the points you have other problems.

Properly operating points system will not have any arc. Maybe a feeble strand now and then ... have to be in the dark to see it.

I did not mean to imply that points/condensor system does not work. Of course it works when adjusted properly. All I was saying is that particular failure point is eliminated with transistorized ignition. Progress. I have a 1949 Farmall C running points and condenser, works just dandy.