What have I done wrong here

[Delirious]

Got started on my 1st generator, 10 stainless plates 316L 1/8"x2"x5" +-+-+-+-+- spaced 1/16" with nylon washers and welded on the ends are 5/16" bolts. It was cooking quite well for the first 5 min. untill the f... wires started to melt! The meter shows less then 1amp and the charger at 11.5V. WTF? is that enough to melt the shielding of the 14gauge copper wire?
Any ideas?

[HHO BLASTER]

Please show a pic of your cells out of the water close up looks like you have 12 volts on each cell

[Delirious]

Here it is.

[HHO BLASTER]

Here it is.

I may work if you run it at around 2 volts these cells you made are in parallel

You were pumping about 40 amps into that sucker that's why the wire went up in smoke

If you need help on how to make a 2-3 volt power supply from a junk microwave oven just ask

[WaltherPP9mm]

With 9 cells all in parallel, all of them at 12 V instead of 2,5 or maybe 3V, your result was quite predictible.

Go on and read all the doc you could find here then you will know what you were doing wrong... It is stated somewhere around here, on an excellent pdf doc that the efficient potential for one cell is around 2,5V. Everything over that is only wasted energy.

I don't remember the link to that pdf (I saved mine on my hard drive after finding it somewhere) but I think that you do a quick search for "Panacea BOCAF Hydroxy Course" or something like that you will find it quite easily. If not, ask me and I will send you my copy.

There is a nice guy here who always complains about his Toyota (http://www.hhoforums.com/member.php?u=1028):) :) :) Check out his signature.

[Philldpapill]

Are you sure there wasn't a short somewhere??? That wire doesn't look like it melted slowly... It looks like it was a quick melt, which sounds like a momentary short.

[FuzzyTomCat]

With 9 cells all in parallel, all of them at 12 V instead of 2,5 or maybe 3V, your result was quite predictible.

Go on and read all the doc you could find here then you will know what you were doing wrong... It is stated somewhere around here, on an excellent pdf doc that the efficient potential for one cell is around 2,5V. Everything over that is only wasted energy.

I don't remember the link to that pdf (I saved mine on my hard drive after finding it somewhere) but I think that you do a quick search for "Panacea BOCAF Hydroxy Course" or something like that you will find it quite easily. If not, ask me and I will send you my copy.



Hi WaltherPP9mm

I posted the PDF file you referred to earlier in another thread ..... Can someone line it all out for me? (http://www.hhoforums.com/showpost.php?p=29896&postcount=2)

Panacea-BOCAF On-Line University - Hydroxy Course (http://www.panaceauniversity.org/Hydroxy%20Boosters.pdf)

Your correct this is a very good document for reference

Regards,
Fuzzy
:)

[WaltherPP9mm]

Are you sure there wasn't a short somewhere??? That wire doesn't look like it melted slowly... It looks like it was a quick melt, which sounds like a momentary short.

I recently experimented that. Even if I was well aware of the fact that it is useless to operate a cell under such conditions, my military/aeronautic designer background teached me a good lesson: "OK, design says this shouldn't happen, but what if?! Better stress it under controlled conditions than finding it suddenly blowing under your ass..."

So I ran 12V into a battery of cells in a manner quite similar to the one our delirious friend did :)

For about 15 minutes it runned producing a lot of gas and heat and then, suddenly, it "blowed under my ass" completely fusing my 8mm cross-section wiring. After waiting the gizmo to cool down I couldn't find any evidence of instantant short-circuit.

Oh, and many thanks to our fuzzy friend :)

Regards,
Daniel.

[Delirious]

Thanks for the replys.
There is no short and the amp meter only shows .95 amp before I shut it down (started around .35 amp) increased with heat I guess. I will read up some more thanks for the links.

[Philldpapill]

Well, let's think about this logically for a moment. What do we see from the pictures? The wires leading from the battery, to the cell, appear to be melted. What causes wires to melt? Heat. Was the heat caused from the outside(air), or the wire core? Probably the wire core. What causes the wire core to heat up? Electrical Current. How much current is required to heat the copper wire to melt the insulation? (14AWG) Greater than 30A.

You say that the meter only reads ~1A? There is absolutely NO WAY that 1A alone could cause that damage, therefore, at least 30A was flowing through the wire. Why was 30A flowing through the wire? Under steady state operation, I highly doubt 30A was flowing. The only logical conclusion, is that there was some kind of high current surge, in far excess of 30A, momentarily. This could be caused by plates under water BRIEFLY touching. This would cause very minimal evidence because the plates would be cooled by the water, while large currents are flowing. The copper wire, however, would not be cooled, so it would heat up very quickly.

Look closely at all your plates. I will bet you money that there is a very small damaged part, probably less than 1/8".

[Philldpapill]

I just re-read your post. You say nylon washers, but what kind of BOLT are you using? This bolt should ALWAYS be some type of insulator - never metal.

[Delirious]

Well, let's think about this logically for a moment. ............
The only logical conclusion, is that there was some kind of high current surge, in far excess of 30A, momentarily. This could be caused by plates under water BRIEFLY touching. This would cause very minimal evidence ........

Look closely at all your plates. I will bet you money that there is a very small damaged part, probably less than 1/8".

Well .... if you had bet money you would have won. Right you were. I got looking at the plates closer and there was a short caused by weld spatter. The weld spatter did not touch the opposite polarity plate as there was a small gap to start with but as plates heated it must have shorted at that point.
Anyways I reran the test after cleaning off the spatter and after 15min the wires got quite warm did not melt the shielding but too hot to touch. Still only drawing .35-.68 amps. Voltage shows a reading of 0?

[HHO BLASTER]

Well .... if you had bet money you would have won. Right you were. I got looking at the plates closer and there was a short caused by weld spatter. The weld spatter did not touch the opposite polarity plate as there was a small gap to start with but as plates heated it must have shorted at that point.
Anyways I reran the test after cleaning off the spatter and after 15min the wires got quite warm did not melt the shielding but too hot to touch. Still only drawing .35-.68 amps. Voltage shows a reading of 0?

remove the wire when its running if you get a good spark you amp meter is bad did you say you put a shunt on it

680 ma will not heat the wire unless your using thin wire what gauge is it

number #10 is the smallest you should use

voltage shows zero cannot be, must be another bad meter zero volts don't heat wire

[Philldpapill]

Well, I'll take my chances and say I'm on a roll. If you had your ammeter connected during the short, chances are you blew the ammeter and now it's giving an erroneous reading. If your wires are getting hot(14AWG), you are pulling at least 20A - probably more.

[diesel133]

15 blank wall plates from lowes, -nnnnnn+nnnnnn- will give you about 12-15 amps low 110 degree heat after an hour and about 1.5-1.8 lpm if built correctly. You need neutrals.

[Delirious]

15 blank wall plates from lowes, -nnnnnn+nnnnnn- will give you about 12-15 amps low 110 degree heat after an hour and about 1.5-1.8 lpm if built correctly. You need neutrals.

Thanks for your thoughts, I know that the amperage looked suspicious particularly when voltage shows 0. Anyways this was my 1st go at it and mostly for testing purposes. I have now modified my setup and put a fused end on the battery plus side, started with a 10amp then 15 and last at 20 amp fuse which ran fine for some 20 min. but did not produce much gas. I have not built anything to measure the output yet to compare output from different plate configurations.
Question, if positive plates produce oxygen and negative hydrogen what do neutral plates do?
Thanks for the help.

[Philldpapill]

"Positive" plates are called an anode. These suck electrons off of the OH- in the water. Negative plates force electrons on to the H+ ions in the water. When you have a neutral plate, one side of the plate will look like more negative(this side would be facing a positive plate, normally). Since the plate "looks" negative, it will dump electrons into the water, and act like a negative plate. Those electrons have to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is the other side of the plate. This other side looks more negative, and will suck electrons off the water in order to feed the other side, the negative side.

For a "neutral" plate to do it's job, however, you need to take care to ensure that there isn't any water path for the electricity to flow through. Due to some more complicated chemistry reasons, the voltage it takes to strip an electron at a plate, is higher than what it takes to allow electrons to flow through the water. In other words, the saying is true - "Electricity will flow through the path of least resistance". For this reason, you need to make sure that the neutral plate acts as a complete barrier to the water/electrolyte. In other words, if water can flow from the + side to the - side of the neutral plate, it's not a neutral plate; it's extra weight and nothing more.

[HHOmer]

Being a newb at this and still picking the forums brains, I had the why can't you just -+-+-+-+ etc. thought too. And after not to much reading I came to understand that you could do it but it would better serve you as a dirty water dog cooker. Guess there was some tru-dat in dat.