IGNITION

Hello Johann Vondrus

You say: <"....2 spark- plugs arc continuously using a 12 v battery....">

Do you intend those 2 spark plugs are sparking continually, without ceasing, ever, unless you manually switch off the power from the 12 Volt battery?

Or do you intend 2 spark plugs are sparking each time as a distributor switches the High Tension Voltage around from one to the other?

Reply here please, with

Kind Regards....

Sorry, can't read your reply, Sparkstation. Page is over it saying insufficient information. Do you know how a Teaser works, it arks as long as you hold the button down. Teaser Mfg. won't tell me but what I need should work the same way. Forget about existing ignition systems using distributer and coils. What I need is someone to tell me what to put in between the battery and spark-plug to make a continuous ark.

I saw a guy a couple of weeks ago with just the device you describe.

He had a 'trembler coil' ignition on a special motor he built. The result was a continuous arc whilst there was 12v power to the coil. He had some other device in the line also. He said it was from inside a fluouro light tube. Looked like a mini heater coil encapsulated in a glass bulb. When the current was activated it buzzed and lit up a little. I didn't have the time just then to query, in depth, but some of the other guys reading this may be able to take it further.

Hope this may help a bit.

Cheers,

Stu

There are automotive ignition control units that should be able to be made to fire by using an artificial signal to cause the ignition to fire at a rate that simulates near 6000 rpm. Use that to fire an early 90s GM duel coil. Try Accell, MSD, or Mallory. Good luck.

Bob, thanks for your interest, please read my reply to sparkstation

Years back there was a black box that was designed as a temporary ignition system for disabled cars. I had one in about 1978. MSD also had a counter display that also had a continuous spark. I don't know where you can find either of these today. You might try MSD to see if they still use that counter display. The item you need is not hard to construct. But I am not the one that knows how to make it. Why not try the communications and electronics section? Good luck.

PS. If I could remember who made the black box I would have told you. Sorry.

I'm not an automotive guy but I do know electronics. If you know what voltage a sparkplug needs for an arc to jump, you can make an inverter circuit to convert the 12VDC to an AC voltage and step it up to the needed voltage using a made-to-order transformer.

After that, you have a choice. Stay with AC or reconvert it back to DC by putting in a high voltage diode.

Great. The right person for the right job. In an automotive application 20,000 volts is a start for an engine. If the spark is not in a high pressure environment, like an engine, 10,000 should be plenty. The answer to the AC-DC is back to the OP. Thank you for the help.

This may help. When a person wants to check the igniter in a 90's Honda/Acura, a soldering gun butt is held within an inch or so of the distributor igniter. On this model, Civic, Accord, Integra etc., the coil is mounted inside the distributor. When a 117v soldering gun is energized, it induces the igniter to fire, 60 cycles a second, to coincide with your 60 hertz household current. A distributor can be had for $150 or so. You'll have to figure out what to do with the hot electrodes of the soldering gun. Use the butt of the gun, not the electrodes, to induce the spark. Since household current is at 60 hertz, your spark will be 60 times a second, although this might be fast enough for you.

Thank you. Now that sounds like a science project in the making.

You can accomplish that by wiring a DC relay coil, through one of its normally open contacts, in series with the primary of a spark coil. The relay coil operating voltage should be as low as you can find (1 or 2 volts DC), or a 6 volt DC relay in series with a 6 volt spark coil, which will work best. The contacts of the relay have to be robust enough to handle the primary current of the spark coil.

The configuration I described creates a buzzer circuit which will continuously produce spark as long as 12 volts is supplied.

The output of the spark coil can then be connected to two spark plugs via a properly insulated, fabricated Y connection.

I am an electronics engineer with 30 years background in automotive and computerized systems. For an arc to continue the voltage must be maintained. In most if not all "Spark Plug systems" the voltage is pulsed which allows charge time between pulses. These pulses would be at a specified rate or frequency. You refered to a taser in a post. They are pulsed as well. A fery fast "high frequency" pulse would appear continious. Can you tell me what frequency or freq range you need? Do you have any experiency building circuits with COTS "Commercial off the shelf" electronics?

generating a continuous spark is a question of providing a sufficiently high voltage to bridge the spark gap in the dielectric medium. the current need not be particularly high, but the voltage must be. You can do this in several ways. the simplest is probably using a transformer, but such a high ratio of turns is probably difficult to find, and then you need to rectify it for continuous arc, or deal with an alternating arc, which may or may not meet your unspcified needs. One simple way of generating high voltages is to use a multiplier chain. this uses diodes and capacitors in a sequential arrangement to increase voltage. very high voltages can be generated in this manner, and it has the advantage that it can produce a regulated output voltage in certain cases.

because both of these circuits produce a continuous high voltage, as opposed to the pulsed high voltages produced by a conventional ignition coil design they are capable of sustaining a spark.

In both cases you need to take a great deal of care with the design and layout of the circuit, so, unless you are skilled in this area you shouldn't attempt it. In that case I know of no commercial systems designed for car igntiions, but the sort of circuit you might use can be found in something called 'jacobs ladder'. this is a novelty circuit that creates a continuous arc between two vertical wires, where the spark appears to climb up the wire.

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~antoon/circ/hv/jacobs/jacobs.html

There are huindreds of other links by googling jacobs ladder circuit

With most types of circuit you simply cannot get away from the need for a transformer and its turns ratio, so asking to be spared this is asking for no replies. It is unavoidable that you need to be able to do this safely. If not you shouldn't even attempt it. saying you can follow instructions is to show a total lack of understanding of what is involved technically, or from a safety perspective.

Al

SAFETY is the key word no matter what design you attempt.

A rather brilliant college friend of mine built a Tesla coil (which, by the way, might be what you are looking for) complete with a capacitor made of a 2' X 2' piece of glass with sheets of foil on each side. When he turned it on, the foil vibrated violently for a few seconds and then the nail at the end of the coil sent out sparks. Unfortunately, his hand got between the nail and a water pipe, a distance of about two feet (in his basement) and became a convenient ground path. He was thrown about four feet and knocked out. Luckily, other than being dazed and shaky for a while, he wasn't visibly injured.

KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!!! Have someone present in case of an emergency any time the system is live. It will bite you if you don't!

This outfit makes a flame thrower kit for traditional hot rods that fire two plugs as long as you push the button. Around $60.00 http://www.eatmyflames.com/index.php

Great site. Do you know if this will work after I convert my car to run on hydrogen?

Yes. It relies on squirting a little gas in the exhaust stream. If you use hydrogen, you will get a nearly invisible flame and probably a lot of steam. Dark moonless nights would be cool!

Be careful with this. Remember that the power output through a taser is largely limited by the amount of energy that the little 9 V or AA batteries can supply. If you simply hook the same kind of circuit up to a 12 V car battery, you run the risk of creating a little arc-welder or plasma torch for a second or two until you blow the ends off the spark plugs, and likely burn out your electronics as well.

I think the original request was what to do with two spark plugs per cylinder. E.g. how to operate them, how to make the circuit and so on. No DC-arc nor quasi-DC arc by means of RF-HV-feeding and so on and of course no taser electronics.

I think the easiest would be to look under to hood of a meanwhile good old Alpha Romeo 164 twin spark from Milan, Italy. But it is probably a very simple arrangement, everything is doubled... haha

Just another example how to understand questions... ;-)

Lets not make this too tough. The Model T Ford Coil will spark as long as current is applied. Not sure how long they would last however.

Google, "Ron the Coilman." He rebuilds these coils and truly understands how they operate. He would love a challenge.

Hi JV

I keep shooting from the hip and sometimes miss the point and theme by a country mile. Never the less, what you are after seems be be a constant source of reliable ignition power. Here comes the source of my future embarrassment:

Use a laser. I can imagine that your power requirements would have to be altered and I can't even tell you by how much. Maybe some one here has more information about lasers and required energy to generate a laser beam with similar characteristics of a spark. (yes, thanks Sparky).

I have seen lasers do unbelievable things and their precision is even more astounding. I have not the time to google and don't know how your bank account will handle this but good luck. Ky.

There's no enough info,

1. are those plugs mounted in the same combustion chamber, or two different ones?
2. What do you mean by "continues", I is this a continues fuel flow design?
3. Do you want a mechanical or electronic ignition system?
4. If you tell us a bit more about the application we might be able to answer you a bit better...

Wangito.

Hello wangito

That's what I said in my first answer.

We have still not been advised by the Question asker, and given enough facts to give a proper answer.

Thus almost any answer is not taking account of the unknowns and variables, perhaps it may be an an attempt, but not necessarily a correct answer, just as you and I say.

Kind Regards....

Hi Johann,

If you really need a continuous spark, you will need two DC power supplies with at least 5,000 volts output (one for each plug). That will be expensive. If a repeating spark will do, then two Model T spark coils are all you need. They have a built in vibrator to interrupt the battery connection to the primary, to give you the repeating spark.

S

To Guest #29

For your info this thread was opened in 2007 with the same result , some funny some serious ideas how to make a system to make a spark-plug to arc continuously.

Ron #17 sorry I missed your private message in 2007.

Before Wankel made his first engine ,I was thinking of making a better mousetrap--- make a sympler IC engine meaning transmit the power of the combustion via a rotor to the output shaft. Drawing board an slide rule , improving the idea was time consuming till 2 years ago I got a cad-cam system . Now the mechanical part ins complete.

Calculating the combustion time per chamber and having 6 per revolution indicates that this shaft turns faster than any IC piston engine can ever turn .

Here is the problem.

Ignition Mfg. tell me they do not make one that can fire that fast, and nobody needs it.

Diesel glow plugs would last about 500 miles , jet igniter's fire every 15 seconds and you can't open a jet engine for 20 minutes after shut-down ,not safe.

So what's wrong with designing a system to make the spark plug arc continuously.

A Taser came to mind , press a button and it arcs, I have no idea what's inside and how it works. All I now it takes a high voltage to create an arc and it can hurt you if constructed improperly. I took machines apart and put them back together, but electronics ? 115V AC in a wall socket, 12V DC car battery , transformer to change voltage up or down, model T coil, rectifier? diodes? don't tell me I'm 77 year old and don't want to get into electronics.

Fallowing instruction's? yes I can , clean and connect the cable to the car battery, connect the spark-plug cable and what's in between that makes a continuous arc ?

that is what I hope a qualified auto electronic engineer can tell me , simple, economically to build safe and fit under the hood of a car.

I hope I explained myself, revealed enough information what the purpose is to make a continuous arc.

Shape ans size of this R6 engine ( stands for Rotary6 Engine)

Imagine a beer can with a pencil through the center, air intake on one face exhaust on the other face. Fuel injectors synchronized with RPM and air pressure, ignition 2 continuous arcing spark-plugs or something better than standard spark-plugs ?

Guest#29 : I hope this is the info you wanted and to all others ,thank's for your info and I hope soething practical coms out of it.

How high do you think this engine will rev to? MSD has items that will work to 15,000 RPM, with ability to fire 2, 4, 6, or 8 cylinders.

"Diesel glow plugs would last about 500 miles..."

Two points. First: good enough - if you can make them last 10 miles, and the engine does what you expect it to do, you can let someone else develop longer-lasting glow plugs. Some igniters in home heating systems have a ceramic surface exposed to the flame, and are only powered (electrically) during start-up. After that, the ceramic is white hot, and continuously serves as a ignition source for fuel/air mixture directed toward it. Second, other forms of heating are possible for such a ceramic flame-holder, as simple as a propane torch with the flame directed through a u-shaped ceramic tube having the bend inside the combustion chamber.

Wankel's proof-of-concept engine ran in 1957, and the patent was filed in the US just three days later [according to timelines I've seen] - so the plans were complete, and application was written up, probably based on earlier versions such as the 1954 model. That doesn't mean that every engineering issue was solved, just enough to prove that it worked. Improvement can come afterward. Make your engine, get it running, get the patents filed, and others will pay to help development.

Hi Guy.

Thanks for your idea that could work but finding Model T spark coils , I don't think they are made anymore. Junk-yards or back-yards in the USA, internet maybe ??

Any other good idea?

John

Hello Johann Vondrus

All those Model T Coils have been bought by the vintage car enthusiasts.

You could do what I did some 50+ years ago, and make your own.

3 miles of #40 SWG enamelled copper wire for the secondary, (tens of thousands of turns), and use soft iron wire for the core, cut into lengths. The wire I used was tie wire, as used by reinforcing steel fixers for tying rebar together where there was a joint or overlap in the reinforcing.

I cannot remember number of primary turns, probably around 200 primary turns, but wire size was around 8 or 10 gauge insulated copper.

My HT coil could throw a spark some 2 inches, far longer that the half-inch of the Model T coils, and I rectified it, for use as the electrical input to my home-made van de Graaf generator, the bowl of which was a "hammered out to correct shape" old-fashioned "copper" as used in a wood-fired water boiler we removed from the outside was-house when I pulled it down.

The van de Graaf Generator I made could throw sparks some 2 feet long, but as it charged up the bowl, it became much harder to turn the belt to get the electrons up into the copper bowl, because of same-polarity repulsion.

For an interesting electronic HV generator, refer to: http://www.electricstuff.co.uk/marxthree.html

There you should see the picture below, and the diagram is clearer on the original webpage as above.

The above circuit will generate 25kV on a continuous basis - but be careful, because it could be lethal.

LOPT is a Colour TV "Line Output Transformer".

Kind Regards....

Hi Guy's.

This is my last reply to anyone on this thread, and here is why. I spend the last 10 days in Texas, talked to an old guy in an old supply House about a Model T coil . I told him that I don't have a Model T but here it is what I would use it for. Oh you don't want this wooden box, you want this. A coil , a condenser, a plastic connection plug and a diagram how to connect the whole thing . For 2 spark plugs you need 1 sets each and they will arc continuously , total cost $50.00

Thank you guys for your help.

John

Feedback! Please post the diagram, and if possible, information on the coil and capacitor being used. Frankly, I suspect that the two must form a resonant circuit, which may provide sparks at a high rate - too fast for the eye to see gaps - rather than a continuous discharge, but if they DO somehow provide a continuous spark, I want to understand how it's done. "Normal" Kettering ignition requires a set of points to interrupt the circuit, permitting the capacitor to charge, then dumping the voltage through the coil to increase voltage. What is missing here, besides the battery, is that interrupter. Or is this to run off some other source of electricity?

Ron , go to google and search for " Free Buzzcoil ". I made a print but can't transfer it to this program .

Let me know if you found it and what you think of it.

John

Is this the one? (I haven't managed to make a copy of the picture that will insert here, either - but what is the circular object at top center - is it a set of points, as in a distributor?). I don't see any text or description to explain the diagram.

THE BOZZ COIL: A NEARLY FREE BUZZCOIL

Here's a way to rig up a liver quivering
BUZZCOIL that runs good on twelve volts.
They find much use on early spark plug
ignition systems, flame thrower exhausts,

and testing your bladder. The relay in
question is a 12V NC/NO. The coil is a
12V with internal resistor for space
requirements . Follow the link
to find all the parts in one box:

http://royalcrossfarm.com/BOZZCOIL.htm:

BOZZCOIL COMPONENTS
Bosch Style Relay ...............................................$7.49
Wiring harness for Relay (much neater)..................$3.49
Universal 12 Volt Coil With Internal Resistor......... $19.99
Universal Resistor only .........................................$5.49

Ron, that's the one. The circular object on top is the contact of the ignition switch. Like I said before ,I'm not en electronic whiz but I can wire this together and shield it so I don't get a shock.

John

You complained: "I'm not an electrical whiz but I can put things together per instruction."

You could also use some help with explaining yourself . . . so that others do not have to guess what you mean . . . because so much necessary information is not revealed . . . such that there are too many possible explanations of what you might mean that, for some reason, you are unwilling or unable to describe . . . so that others have to waste time holding your hand and doing Q & A in order to help you merely to ask the question . . . which they ought not do.

So, maybe your answer to the following will help get you going in the right direction towards asking an answerable question regarding your (?) spark powering experiment:

If it is (virtually continuous) combustion ignition within the two chambers you (inferentially) mention that is to be the objective attained by connecting (again, inferentially) a 12V (car) battery (in series or in parallel) to the two (presumably store-bought, and unmodified, automotive) spark plugs,

Then why not forget spark plugs and go with glow plugs instead? (or connect spark plug anodes to cathodes, respectively, with filaments . . . to achieve the same . . .?)

My friend, Guest, thanks for your first few words. I wholheartedly agree and must say that I contribute only this "thank you" to this thread and nothing more. I have to commission a particle accelerator now and take care that our electrons at light speed don't smash into the walls of the vacuum tube.

And to the initial poster of the question: Maybe some garage can help you much better than us, Good Luck!

Hmm! You're in Switzerland; you work at an accelerator. Are you one of those who are about to pull planet Earth into a black hole and turn us all into spaghetti?

Exactly! We're doing this 500 Million times per second. That is the basic frequency of the accelerator (500MHz).

As my last contribution to this thread, I would like to express my perplexity as to the need for a spark plug to "arc continuously." As everyone knows, a spark in a combustion engine is only needed for a brief instant, long enough to ignite the flammable gas mixture in the combustion chamber. Once ignited, the gas burns with no further need for any spark-type ignition source until the fuel mixture is consumed at which point a new injection of fuel/air mixture is made, the combustion chamber is pressurized, and the process is repeated.

...And unless you find a rich source of unobtaineum to make your new spark plugs from, a continuous spark with enough energy to ignite the combustion gases would not only be a big waste of energy, it would quickly burn away the anode and cathode material of the spark plug leaving it inoperable.

Good luck with your project.

Why not forget about a spark plug and use a glow plug this will give off heat all of the time to do the job?

But the problem is, what job. The original query said nothing about what the sparking (as if continuously) plugs would do; it says only that they will be "mounted" into combustion chambers, but not that anything (any fuel) will be ignited. I had wondered whether he might be trying to set up some kind of test (tester) . . . perhaps for testing plug durability . . . something like that. But it's hard to fathom that someone doing such testing would need to ask how to set up a tester.

Oh, now I see. Johann has posted an explanation, post #34. Will need to study it a bit more.

Hi John,

You have never replied to my questions but that's not the point.

Reading other's posts and your replies, I am getting to the conclusion that you are not only "Not an electrical whiz..." but not even a mechanical whiz as well.

Are you sure you know what you want? because I am sure you don't.

Hope it helps, (others, not to waste their time on nonsense threads)

Wangito.

If you continually arc a high voltage across mild steel spark plug electrodes

they will quickly deteriorate.The only way to do it is to use a very noble

metal , like platinum.

Hello Guest,

Tungsten electrodes would really stand up the best.

Kind Regards....