hoola

Completely containing the stack within acoustic dampening material may serve to falsify the anomalous readings without the vacuum chamber, and is cheap and easy to do. Attaining a second oscilloscope would allow simeltaneous monitoring of both ends of the stack. Now, I have the end passives matrixed together with 1,2K resistors, serving as a single scope signal source. The ability to see waveforms at both ends of the stack will allow real time adjustments to mimimize the shock energy at one end, while maximizing it at the other.

The redesigned power supply has proven inadequate, so have added a separate transformer driven power supply onto the main chassis just for the output transistors that supplies +600V. I also have changed the method of the scale setup. The stack is now hanging free and the scale is positioned under the counterweight end, with a thin cotton thread hanging down to the scale with a small counter weight sitting on the scale itself, keeping the thread in a small tension of approx 6 mg. This causes the vibrations to have to travel across the mass of the rocker arm, and then down the thread to the scale, so is much more resistant to false readings. I am still getting anomalous readings in the 2-3 mg range, and these readings have been largely in accordance with what the scope traces predict they should be, but still could be a product of acoustic standing waves which naturally would be in accord with any "real" thrust derived weight changes, so will require the vacuum chamber which I am accumulating parts for now.

Today I redesigned the internal power supply to provide +500V to the final output transistos, alleviating the need for the external power supply for the time being. I also removed the negative feedback sub assembly as it has proven to have a negligible positive effect under the recent series of design alterations. Recent waveforms that give weight changes show an asymmetry with truncated tops that give weight increases, or truncated bottoms, giving weight reductions. These changes generally fall in the 2-3 mg range. I have also found that the sweep function of the generator is not necessary for weight changes, and sometimes reduces such changes, so tend to leave it off. v

today I found that the rubber tube, which is basically an oversized weather boot for a coaxial antenna cable, which has a hollow interior, was the source of the excessive readings. I filled the boot interior with toilet paper to absorb the resonances and now I get controllable readings back down to the 2-3 mg range. The boot is of stiff rubber, tapered towards a flat bottom. about 3" long. I cut 1/4" off the top and cemented onto the top a small steel dome of 1/4" diameter to give the bottom of the stack a solid contact at the central point of the dome, which transfers the energy down to the scale. I have tried several interfaces between the stack and the scale and the compliance of the rubber material I thought would reduce transfers of vibrations to the scale, but I failed to consider the resonant interior space enhancing those transfers.

I think the load cell in the scale is wearing out and sticking, which would explain the non 0000 readings instead of returning to baseline. The scale is not designed, I would think, to absorb any excessive vibrations. It seems possiblle that a new one would be fairly accurate for a week or so of tests, then begin to stick. So, as they are so cheap anyway, I will try one more of this same model to see if it returns to 0000 baseline out of the box using these same settings.

a followup on testing today checks various on/off settings on piezo drives. I got the first 8mg weight gains last month with using only piezos 2,3, 4. I normally use that since it seemed to have some good early result, and turning on the 1 and 5 piezos seemed to eliminate the observed readings. I use all piezos now, but any three adjacent ones are necessary to get results the max. results. I turned on various single and combinations of all piezos and the results : p2, no response, p3, no response, p4, no response. p1 and p2, some lesser response, p1 and p3, no response. p2and p3, some lesser response. p2 and p3, andp4, max response. p1, no response, p5, no response, p1and p3 and p5 no response. p1 and p2 and p3, max response. p3 and p4 and p5, max response. Sometimes using all piezos seems to increase reading levels, sometimes not. When leaving the trigger at a stationary point, the readings change, and not just at background, levels, but in jumps of up to 15-20mgs that occur in fairly regular intervals of about 3 seconds. Still puzzled that the scale does not return to 0000 when shutting off drive to stack. There is a scale issue somewhere. It was a $30 jewelry scale from amazon, and has been rather mistreated with bumps and accidental overweights that occasionaly occur with months of use, plus I disassembled it to add the remote on/off wires. I have a container of chocolate near the stack and a microwave detector that picks up nothing. No melted chocolate so far. Overall, no responses were found since last month's 8mg anomaly (which was at the 300V level), until I raised the B+ from 300V to 600V with the new generator. I briefly went back to 300V, and got no reading in any combination of piezos turned on. Still listening for the "surf music" and have heard nothing too similar since the 8mg anomaly. I do have an AM radio nearby tuned to a blank region, and the tonality amplifies what I hear coming from the stack, and reinforces the observation that the readings jump either positive or negative with a distinct change, or "pop" sound, of which some are like the "perfect golf swing click" as previously reported.

to falsify my readings I removed the 3" hard rubber tubular interface between the scale and the stack. I left the scale and stack in the similar positions as when operating, just no physical contact was between them. Ranging the trigger control as previously described, I observed no change in the scale from 0000, eliminating the issue of a direct dump of RFI into the scale and the lead wires I attached to it (a small pair of wires were added to provide a way to turn on and off the scale remotely, without touching the scale itself). Next, with the rubber interface still missing, I balanced the stack and it's counterweight as close as possible to neutral, and again ranged the trigger. I saw no apparent movement, which indicates the readings have limited validity, as the observed weight changes should have been sufficient to tip the balance. This was a crude first attempt at a balance test, and I will upgrade and return to that tomorrow after continuing scale tests. The apparatus is not properly designed for such a test, only for simple weight change detection. I normally have a 5mg overage transmitted down to the scale, which is the tare weight I have been using. There still persists the possibility that acoustic standing waves are causing the weight changes, as the sound is quite loud and I have begun to search for a vacuum chamber. I do have a large fish tank, and will be purging it with helium to see if the lighter atmosphere reduces or eliminates the readings.

today I hooked the extra power supply back up and ran the B+ supply up to approx 600V and noticed an increase in minor random weight changes, which is normal with the higher voltages expressed in higher vibrations of the stack. Upon activating the time delay/enable ckt. I noticed an immediate large change in expressed weight. At the delay/enable control at it's maximum setting (largest delay between scans) I got maximum change to the indicated weights, depending on how the B&K internal trigger control was positioned. I have read weight changes of up to 60 milligrams, repeatable, and seemingly real. I can provide positive or negative thrust reading depending on the rotation of the trigger control position. In this situation, the higher readings were at full clockwise, the lower readings were at center, with no further changes as you went fully counter clockwise. After about an hour of this observed behavior, I turned off the sweep portion, and went straight sine wave, and the reading protocol abruptly changed. With that setting, the weight was highest at trigger center position, and dropped to it's lowest quickly at an abrupt change in tone of the stack as I rotated it slightly clockwise. Under sweep mode, the changes were smooth and varied with setting as you turned it. Under sine wave, the abruptness was very pronounced. A noticeable problem occurs with turning the generator off periodically to see how the readings were changing to give me a "rest" weight, baseline. The weights do change, either up or down in appropriate fashion, but not to the degree I would have anticipated.

the new generator arrived early, and seems to be fully functional, however with the usual dirty pots and switches. The limitation on the sweep frequency duration of only going up to the millisecond scale, is an issue and I would prefer up to microsecond. The decade switches that control that are on a separate small ckt. board and seems pretty straightforward in it's layout, so I can easily raise the upper limit on that scale, but probably not to the microsecond level. At any rate, many novel traces are now possible with it as it stands, and a few seem interesting. I have had numerous weight changes, but nothing that repeats more than twice per test, which I discount as scale error.

I hooked up the alternate stack after adding the thin poly washers and found no seemingly useful traces, mostly sawtooth and sawtooth variations and saw no changes in weights of any tests so far with it. What traces that did appear were much more rich in overtones and complexities, so the idea of clamping them together directly does seem to be incorrect, at least with the current configuration. There are a few novel traces that seem to have what looks like hysteresis loops imbedded in them, rounded vacancies within some of the larger sawtooth variety. I will switch back to the original stack and drive it with the B&K 3030 sweep generator due here on Monday.

It does seem possible that a sync-up between the generators may have caused a periodic frequency change in the main driver, causing a slight upsweep of the signal during each scan from the basic 88KHZ. It seems worth considering to deliberately mimic this idea. The speed of the shock wave should remain steady regardless of frequency driven, and if that shock wave is overcome during mid cycle by a frequency sweep that desciribes a higher wave speed than physically allowable within the stack, an interference between the two may offer some interesting behaviors as the signal speed "drives through" the physical speed.

it seems possible that any thrust measurements seen are due to a random sync between the main generator and the trigger drive generator. The trigger generator normally starts the scan process at any random piezo, so limiting any chance of seeing positive results. It seems as though, unless the scans are reliably started at the only the first piezo, any shock wave will be much attenuated. I have begun to use the last output, normally unused, to trigger the enable pin, which temporarily halts the scan, and with appropriate delay as provided by an R/C link between the two pins, allows the scan to start again from the first piezo. At this point I have a 30K variable resistor in series with a .0082 cap and the traces now mimic what I was getting with the previous setup, With success of this arrangement, the separate trigger generator will be unnecessary and the scanning sequence well regulated. During last Tuesday's positive results, I could hear a new sound that was like a theremin being played through a "drip echo" reverb unit used by surf rock guitarists. After a half hour of getting thrust readings, I shut of the machine for 15 minutes, and tried a restart. No thrust reading have been seen since then, and none of that new sound has been heard.

upon considering why the new stack doesn't supply any useful looking traces, it seems possible that the piezos need to act freely, to a limited extent, and the problem is not due to the change of the areas of connection. So, I am going to place the same poly washer thicknesses into them to try to replicate the original stack spacing and torque, while leaving the altered connections, to see if the traces will then match up closer to the original.'s traces. I am also going to hook up both stacks in parallel to see how they interact. There is a lot of broad resonances going on between the individual piezos, it will interesting to see how they would all interact as a driven pair.

correction...the aforementioned weight gain of 8 mg was achieved at 88KHZ and 3.1 KHZ.

I discovered a wiring error that went undetected until hooking up the new stack yesterday. The firing order for piezo 3 and 4 had been reversed when I added a quick disconnect plug between the stack and the driver chassis, when I moved out to the warehouse last spring. This explains my negative results all summer. Upon correcting the error, the new stack still didn't seem to provide a trace that seemed interesting, so I hooked the original stack back in and now am getting weight gains or loss of up to 8 milligrams on a consistent basis. The maximum weight change is an increase of 8 mg occuring when turning off piezos 1 and 5. At that point I was driving the stack at 88KHZ with a trigger frequency of 31 KHZ. Small variations in drive vs. trigger freqs determine whether the stack becomes lighter or heavier, although the 88KHZ main drive frequency seems the most stable trace, which makes sense since the resonant frequency is listed at 44KHZ, Oddy, when I purchased the piezos,, I was sure they were listed at 25KHZ resonant. There is a resonance at the frequency, which may indicate that the overall resonance may have more than one peak. I still suspect that the acoustic pressure is a possible source of the readings. I am in the process of attaining a vaccuum chamber to eliminate that possiblity as it is rather loud, but some of the higher readings seem independent of the volume of the tone. There is a "singing sound" that coincides with the 8 mg reading that is rather pleasant, unlike the harsh normal tone that usually occurs when the stack is giving lower weight changes in the 3-4 mg range.

Initial hookup of new stack gives larger voltage scans of very different appearances from previous stack and responds to generally higher frequencies of scan rates.

I have found that the original face contacts can be easily removed with a fine grit abrasive paper. The removal process reveals that the piezo faces were not quite flat, so the removal process results with flatter surfaces, which should increase shock transference.

Three of the piezos have been more difficult than the other four to get the paint to stick well to the inner surface. I cleaned and repainted this three and used a normal hair dryer set on high heat, low air to attempt to get them to be bonded well. As I was holding the dryer I began to notice small sparks emanating from the piezos. At first I thought the dryer element was arcing slightly, but quickly saw that the sparks were from the outer edges of all 3, which have had their new contacts on for several days and seem sturdy, sparking over to the original contacts, on the faces. This went on for a minute or so, of these tiny white sparks. I stopped the blow dryer for a few minutes and then resumed the same settings blowing onto the piezos and saw no further sparks. The new outer contacts had been kept about 1/32" gapped to the original ones. This is where the sparks occurred, at random points of this gap junction. Upon checking the piezos with an ohmmeter, the new, still uncured inner contacts were quite shorted to the orginal contacts, as the painting process is rather messy, and the intervening edges much be cleaned up to provide the small gap after full curing of 24 hrs. So, it appears that the only gaps in the piezos that weren't shorted out were between the outer new contacts to the originals. Perhaps some chemical reaction of the solvent being rapidly dried has an unusual electrical side effect.

Am having some trouble getting the paint to stick, but they should all be ready in a day or so with experimenting on how to cure them. One mod I have made to the existing stack is to parallel the first buffer piezo (normally disconnected) to the first active piezo's input This couples it's pulse in tandem, offering a larger initial pulse, creating a slightly larger overall trace with no observable increase in noise. The last piezo is the end pulse "turnaround element" buffer, and as such can only be used as the scope signal source, at least as the stack is currently configured.

the nickle paint I ordered off amazon is much more useful as the amount of 12ml is sufficient for the job of coating new contacts on all 7 piezos. The paint seems to be of the same consistency of the pen, which is rather clumpy and dries flaky, but does provide for low ohm contacts. I have finished one piezo and it does respond to an input across the new contacts. A 10V p-p 1KHZ sine wave across them is nearly as loud as to attaching to the original tab faces.

today new youtube videos are up that claim a low power/ high thrust including videos of traces accompanying observable movement of the latest version of the the woodward device. They are claiming thrust up to the millinewton range. These are from SSI APW 2020 zoom meetings just completed of several speaker with many interesting side comments. I have found that the conductive pen i have tried does work, but requires an entire pen to do just the outside perifery, so will get some aluminum or silver paint and try to make the contact change economically feasible.

Steminc, the manufacturer of the piezo materials has agreed in principle to make the altered contacts, but would need a minimum order of 300 pieces, which is beyond my resources at this time, so I will proceed with altering the contacts as described.

I received the conductive pen and am finding the conductivity is rather low on the Chemtronics CW2000 nickle based pen. It might work well enough to try to see if the alternate contacts can be done here, but I suspect the paint will not properly bond atomically to the ceramic, and will offer a weaker response or perhaps a mere capacitive transfer of energy. I have attempted to register with steminc, the manufacturer, with no good results. Somehow it doesn't recognize my inputs, but have sent two emails through their website as an unregistered guest to request a small custom lot of the alternate contacts I want with no response as of yet. If anyone has had experience with conductive pens as to particular quality and ease of use, and has a particular best choice, please let me know. I tried to add multiple layers, with poor results. After the first layer dries, a second layer added has the rather harsh solvents that accompany it, dissolving the first layer, making a clumpy mess of nickle flakes that fall off, and not giving me a good result of a smooth low resistance contact. I will try a phone call this coming week and see if something can be arranged with factory applied alternate contacts for a small run. I see they offer a similar ring piezo with no contacts, which might work better on trying to add my own if no alternative is available from the factory. If no alternative is available, the outside of each surface will be crimped and soldered with a narrow copper thin sheet for individulal inputs and the interior of the ring coated also, with a slightly oversized steel spring expanding to maintain outward tension on the interior, coupling all the stack elements with a common ground.

could it be that the Fermi paradox is caused by a population achieving a sufficient knowledge of physics to infer the end of the universe itself? This perceived act of betrayal by the very fabric of existence upon not only sentience, but even of microbial life, engendering a subconscious form of mania of self hatred that ultimately results in the failure of basic societal functions of these populations. I am not saying that these breakdowns would extinguish life in every case, but would remove or delay significantly the possibility of any continued intellectual advancement. If things keep going down the drain environmentaly here on earth, the obvious delay to address the situation could be an emergent and common feature of all forms of sentience, and as such could signify a defacto "universe immune response" that eliminates or retards defective civiliizations to keep them isolated from civilizations that have managed to have "survived the fire" of it's phase of the cultural domination of super-contrarianistic self negation.

the pursuit of truth does not, in the short run, imply happiness or even the need to be happy at the present time.