February 2004 Newsletter

January 2004 Technical Group Meeting

Ken opened the meeting at 8PM with an apology from Robert. There were eventually 26 people present which was quite good for a January meeting. Athol announced that there was a table of give-aways while Ken began the first demonstration which was an update on his prize winning telephone remote control device. The changes consisted of reducing the standby current, (now <20mA, soon to be only micro amps) a dial tone has been incorporated into the design and some data entry changes have been made for better reliability.

Ken went on to demonstrate a motor (motor made by Mark and the electronics made by Ken). The motor was built to prove the viability of the drive system to be used in an experiment under construction.

The motor consists of Mark and Ken's own designed "Serpentine" winding which is wound around pegs on the perimeter of the motor disc. The motor demonstrated running was a prototype and only had a few of the total number of magnets fitted. However the motor happily ran up to 2,500 rpm with the final version expected to reach 15,000 rpm. A Hall effect device controls the switching pulses to a FET which actually drives the motor coil. People were then invited to come forward and look at the motor up close and discuss the project.

A photo of the rotor, note magnets in every fourth hole. Carbon fibre was used around the outside edge in an attempt the prevent the device coming apart at high speed.

(Match shown for scale)

Mark, Warwick and Ken are working on this project.

I (Bruce) then displayed my rewound car starter solenoid that I am using on my current project, an electric lawnmower. Normally car solenoids draw a lot of current as they have to have enough power to engage the starter drive and also they are only momentary in operation. I only require the contacts to close to turn the electric motor on and also require it to be on for long periods of time. Randal suggested a coil resistance of 10 ohms, which would draw about 1 amp. I used a simple computer programme (written and donated to me years ago by one of the Victorian ASTRO members) to calculate the wire size, number of turns etc. I rewound the solenoid to these specifications and I now have a means of simply switching high currents. I also demonstrated the programme for those who were interested as it has a myriad of uses for experimenters and gave away several copies of the programme on floppies. If you missed out, check out the ASTRO website. (members area)

Randal then discussed his idea of an electric motor using two rotors traveling in opposite directions. As there was not any other projects coming forward, Ken tried to prompt Bob and Lionel to which the reply was "We ain't done nuthin!"

Jan agreed to talk on his latest idea which is a continuation of his climbing pushbike, this version going forwards by the rider rocking from side to side.

Ron had reappeared by this time after cycling home to get some things needed for the meeting. He demonstrated a Dremel equivalent which Mitre 10 are selling for $22. He also showed a printed circuit board drilling jig that he had made that the drill fits into.
Ron also brought along a 300ma incandescent globe and a LED which draws the same current. The LED easily had more light output for the same power in. (1Watt) These LED's are $17 each and run on 3V. Finally Ron showed his Colloidal Silver generator that now has a 0.56ma current limiter fitted. A lot of discussion followed about types of water, phases of the moon, etc.

Andrew mentioned that High Tech Recyclers have Pentium 2 laptops for $450 at the moment. They can be found at 19 Starr Ave, Plympton South.

Peter was next with the alternative sweetener Xylitol which the group is now buying in bulk, see Athol if you are interested.

Peter also mentioned that on Fox news was an item on France and Japan tendering for a fusion reactor which uses very low level radiation materials. There was much discussion on this subject.

Roger, always looking for a bargain, has found that Magnets For Life are giving away a pack of magnets if you go and enquire about their products. They are at 17 Deacon Ave, Richmond. He also showed an advert for a rocking scooter, to which Jan interjected "They stole my idea!" and played an audio tape of an interview about biodiesel that was on the ABC.

Finally there was a reminder about bringing some food along for supper, Matthew read out the Treasurers report and then  instigated a discussion about the inventors competition. Supper and further discussions followed as usual to end another successful technical group meeting. (Sorry there are no pictures of this month's meeting as the group's camera was not available).

...............Bruce

Note: I have taken some photos to add to the newsletter.
Ken

The ASTRO website now has a search engine! It works great! Go to the members page. Try a search on steam, joecell, beck, rife, whatever, give it a try.

PETER'S PAGE

ASTRO MEETING 12th December 2003

Robert...opened the meeting at 8.20 pm with a welcome to all and then called for all entrants in the ASTRO 2003 inventor's competition to come foreword and show their inventions.

Bruce...had two entries.

1. The first was a combined entry by Ken and himself. It was a novel electrical inverter for a solar panel. The power generated was required for charging Bruce's farm electric motorbike. The voltage had to be sufficient to charge a 24 volt battery bank. The circuit that they employed incorporated an ingeniously simple 12 to 36 volt, 96% efficient up-converter consisting of a shottky diode, coil, MOSFET switch and a few capacitors

2. Bruce's second entry

was a shake charged electric torch. Through trial and error, Bruce came up with the right combination of magnets, coils and super capacitor to enable a thirty second shake to produce a good charge to power the super bright Light Emitting Diode (instead of a globe). This produced a remarkably bright light in a dark room.

RonE...came up next with two entries.

1. The first was a beautifully designed PIC micro controller controlled timer board for a Lee Crok Aura Therapy machine. See http://www.keeleynet.com/biology//crock.htm for the full details on the aura machine. Ron's device used a very low current micro controller to perform the desired switch of polarity (every 15 minutes), thus significantly extending the life of the control battery. He has offered to sell these controllers for $50.00 to any one interested.

2. Ron's second entry was a miniature timer with a vibrator alert. It was about the size of a standard rubber eraser, designed to fit inconspicuously inside of a ladies coat or pants pocket. It was designed to produce a non obtrusive reminder every two hours to the wearer so that a set of pelvic muscle strengthening exercises could be performed. This was for women and men with poor bladder control to be able to strengthen and re-educate their pelvic muscles. This required three sets of exercises every two hours. The vibrator that he used was from a mobile phone. It was quite well made and ingenious.

Michael...had built a hydrogen producing unit, consisting of two clear plastic round tubular vertical cells and a third cell configured as a flashback arrestor. The unit was very well made, with two different types of cell configurations used. The first consisted of round perforated plates, horizontally stacked and each second one insulated from the above. The second cell was built in the typical Stanley Meyer fashion with vertical concentric stainless steel tubes. He used the conventional sodium hydroxide as an electrolyte. Michael remarked that electrolysis by conventional method was not very economical, but he then said that there were suggestions on the Webb that there was more to it, perhaps in the JOE Cell vein. He said that he had experienced strange personal effects (like getting dizzy in the head) after running his unit for about five minutes. He was using his unit to experiment with different voltages and frequencies.

Ken...had designed and built a beautifully innovative controller using a standard push button telephone.

The device used standard telephones as the input “keyboard” taking advantage of standard DTMF (dual tone multiple frequency) dial signals (DTMF has good noise immunity and will work over a large distance). The decoder uses a standard DTMF chip and a PIC microcontroller, the pictured unit steps up the voltage from the battery to run the phone. Ken demonstrated using a cordless phone as a remote control the “2” could be wired for “up” the “8” for “down” and so on.
Another of Ken programs could turn relays on and off, 1*=on, 1#=off, 2*=on, 2#=off, **=all on. ##=all off, the software featured a “dial tone” and fairly smart data entry window.
Using three digit numbers relay addresses could go to 999.

Andrew...designed and built (with quite a bit of adaptation) a venturi water transfer pump. He had done this out of necessity as his 3000 gallon toilet water tank had run out of water and his other tank was down hill and needed to be pumped up to replenish the toilet tank. He used the mains water to power the venturi, pumping about 3 litres of tank water with one litre of tap water. He said that it took quite a bit of machining and experimenting with the venturi positioning to get it to work successfully.

Voting slips were passed around to determine the winners.

1. First Prize Ken with his telephone controller. $100.00

2. Second Prize Michael with his hydrogen producing unit. $ 75.00

3. Third Prize Andrew with his venturi water transfer pump. $ 50.00

General Business

Ken ... sought approval to spend $45.00 to buy a computer program that would solar cells to be made by a printing process. This was approved.

Mathew...Said that he will print out and mail the newsletters. he said that this might bring back some of the members as a posted newsletter tended to stir up interest and remind them of upcoming meetings. Only about half of the members had internet access.

RonE...said that he knew of a bloke with all sorts of motors and sought interest from members as to whether a group would like to go to Christies Beach and see these motors. There was positive interest. Ron also wanted to know if there was interest in asking the motor man as a guest speaker. He also wanted to know if there was any interest in an internet training night. The answer was in the affirmative to both. Ron also mentioned an article from Rense.com where Trans fats were now being actively excluded from major food chain store food lines.

RobertN...mentioned that a therapy machine had been discovered in Perth. It was the sole remainder of six original machines. Five had been destroyed and the remaining one is being back-engineered. He also mentioned that there was another new therapy machine from QLD and that it worked on the sub atomic level. He also was arranging a guest speaker to talk on Graviola, as a cure for cancer.

The treasurer gave his report and the meeting closed at about 11.00pm with supper.

Until next meeting

PeterP