I have been working on the automixer trying to be ready for the spring building season. My latest girl just left home for Nigeria so I am building my new Gas Station with the new automixer specifically in mind. I had to do three circuit board iterations because of a case of stupid involving the TO-220 component package pin out. I think it’s all good now. We will see shortly. I have the latest board fully built up and ready to test. Here she is:
Hi Matt…The really cool thing to me is that I can write the control code so that every time the mixer closes more than 75%, it pings the grate shaker to bring the mixer back to center. That alone makes it worth having. Stephen
Yup I plan on doing something similar but will probably use vacuum differentials. We use timers to control this stuff now, but this method releases ash/char prematurely.
Absolutely. My plan is to offer it for sale just as soon as I have some decent time on mine to “wring it out”. I also need to figure out what the current capacity of the sinks are. I made the traces HUGE but I still don’t have a number. The power transistors are rated for +30 amps so I am pretty sure the traces will fry before the components give it up.
Over the last few days I have been wrapping up my business records for the year and I am quite amazed at how far I have come. I owe it all to you folks. You guys allowed me to build hardware for you so I could develop the Gas Stations, the automixer, and the chipper/chunker. I am still mostly unemployed and everything I build comes from wood gas money. Thank you. Hopefully even the folks who couldn’t afford my stuff were shown things that work and were able to move ahead with fewer costly mistakes.
If sales continue to grow, this year I am planning to release the automixer, do a firewood powered generator, and build a wood fueled gas turbine generator. If things go really well and I get the proper business protections I will release the chipper/chunker. I feel tired already.
I guess I didn’t upset too many people with my wood gas talk at the Common Ground Fair last year… They asked me to come back. This year I have asked for time afterward to demonstrate the Gas Station. For those of you who need to submit vacation requests early the dates will be Sep 19-21.
The NSR automixer is not just for fuel-air ratio control. Today I wired up one of the power switches on the board to act as a flare igniter. You can see it working in this video:
I will post a circuit diagram and parts list shortly on the automixer’s web page:
I tried this as well, it wasn’t reliable enough, I might of had a bad set up. But I ended using a glow plug from the 2 ltr Volkswagens. You still need the relay on a timer like you have. Just time it 5 sec on and 5 sec off. Much more reliable, clean and compact system, no need for the coil.
Later I plan to use this to light the system as well
I watched your vid a little closer and found I was missing a part. I did not have a condenser, I would assume this is why I had a weak spark and the inconsistencies?
Anyways, this will be interesting and I hope you succeed keep up your great work!!
But also the glow plug igniter is an option too, this may seem like it is a power consumer. But this runs on a 50% or even less duty cycle so it really is not to bad.
Exactly. In an automotive ignition circuit the condenser is in parallel with a coil forming an underdamped RLC circuit. Every time the circuit is energized or de-energized the circuit “rings” with a damped oscillation. The spark coil is actually a step up transformer so when the RLC primary is “ringing” it induces a high voltage in the secondary to fire the spark plug.
Without the condenser(capacitor) to make the primary circuit “ring” you just get the induction due to the charging of the primary coil which is MUCH shorter, hence the weak, short spark.
Once I get my “real” work done for the day I am going to try to post screen snap shots of all this on my web site.
I just created a new page to document the gasifier electronics I have been working on over the winter. Here is the link:
Now if you folks in the southern hemisphere would kindly send the summer sun my way it would be greatly appreciated. I am ready to get back to building gasifiers.
Matt…This has the RCL oscillation stuff I promised.
