Inside a Dezac ioniser with active dust collection mat.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ก.ย. 2018
- What makes this ioniser unique is the dust collection mat that is charged to a high positive potential with respect to the supply to make it a preferential dust collection zone than surrounding furnishings.
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These units were all the rage in the late 70s. I remember my parents having an Amcor model with transformer/multiplier combination. It came with a small 'tester' which was a neon lamp and a small value high voltage capacitor in parallel on a small PCB.
You would hold one end about 2-3 inches away from the needles, and the other end between the thumb and forefinger. The charge would build up in the capacitor, reach the neon strike voltage giving a small blink of the neon, discharging the capacitor and so on. I was fascinated by Ionisers, and still am.
I have always assumed that an ioniser was the exact same as an ozone generator. Thanks for the video that helped me reevaluate my misunderstanding.
I good bit of my time as an electrician on submarines was spent cleaning and maintaining the ionizing (electrostatic) precipitators. What a pain!
@@Francois_Dupont pedal powered.
@@Francois_Dupont doesn't matter. It's clearly dirty and broken.
+SueBobChicVid
Why did you need to clean them?! Any grunt can clean them.
I imagine crew space being a premium on subs, there wasn't the manpower for that level of labor division.
10:40 Theres a limit to how many stages you can use since there is a lot of voltage drop thru them, depending on what diodes you use. We use them to generate 120 kV for oilfield tools, and about 26-28 stages is the most you can reasonably use, but this depends on the supply impedance and diode resistance.
I assume the high voltage is to power instruments at the end of the string?
My favorite use of this type of technology is the ‘electrostatic precipitator’ that uses metal plates and tensioned wires. A fan draws the air through the stack, you have metal plates spaced a couple inches apart with the wires strung between them, the wire is negative and the plate is positive, then there’s another stack of plates that alternate in charge behind this first stack. I prefer these because it contains and traps the dirt in the machine as opposed to just forcing it to settle around the unit for you to clean up later. All you do is remove the ‘collector cell’ as it’s called, and wash it with a mild alkaline cleaner, let dry and reinstall.
Like you I was fascinated with Ionisers when I was young, I built a few and brought a commercial unit made by Crusair. While it worked very well, I was forced to stop using it because it covered the walls with the pollution it takes out of the air. A process that takes some time to notice, the clue is the clean vertical strips that develops in the corners of the room. The room corners providing the inverse potential gradient to that of spikes. A second observable effect of having the ioniser on, particularly on a dry day, is that the touch activated light switches trigger randomly on and off as clouds of ioniser air is wafted passed them by movement in the room.
I too was concerned by ozone bring generated, as it has an an LD50 at least ten times less than that of hydrogen cyanide.gas. Fortunately my ioniser does not generate very much ozone. ( I have a powerful ozone generated used for cleaning pond water, fully capable of sterilising a whole room. It can actually corroded exposed metal parts if left on too long.)
I am not convinced of the advantages of breathing in negative ioniser air, but it does feel fresher than untreated air. The difference maybe attributed to the effective removal of dust, pollen, fungal spores and dirt from the air, all of which act as allergens. So their removal clearly has health benefits to the human immune system.
It seemed to me that most of the benefits of using an ioniser can be gained by enclosing it in a plastic box and blowing room air through the box using an equipment fan at the inlet. Fitting an earthed metal grill and dust trap at the outlet cleans the air and reduces the amount of negatively ioniser air that escapes into the room. My experiments suggests the system works reasonable well, to the point that the accmulated dust collected represented a fire hazard. Unfortunately the relative small size of the box and its earthing arrangements does not allow the the charged air to build up in the room in quite the same way as a free standing unit. So the choice seems to be clean air and dirty walls. Static electric dust collection has an advantage over nano or micro air filters in that they do not block and do not use any consumables.
yeh my black pyramid ionizer left a dirty, un-wash-offable soot mark on my wallpaper where it was sat in front of on a sideboard. I still have it, its upstairs, unplugged and getting dusty LOL the sweet revenge of dust.
@@JohnnyX50 At about the same time as the popularity of ionisers, there were cheaper , lower tech, fan based air cleaners that used replaceable filters loaded with activated carbon contained in porous artificial fibre packets. I have often wondered why they were not combined with electrostatic cleaners. My experiments with a Tupperware plastic boxes fitted with a fan and ioniser suggest that they are effective and do not suffer from the dirty wall problem. Their biggest drawback is they work too well, making it difficult to design the dust tray so as not to be a fire hazard or blow the accumulated dust and fluff back into the air. If I was to repeat my experiments now, I might design the dust trap with a cyclone feature to separate the charged dust from the clean air. Do you know if the Dyson air filter uses electrostatic precipitation or does it just use expensive microfiber filters?
I have seen advertised on television shopping channels a water based air filter, that some how blows air through scented water. The water turns black as the air is cleaned. I am not sure how these avoid excessive evaporation, raising the room air humidity to an acceptable level. Maybe they don't, which explains why I have not seen them for a while.
The water probably also turns black from the microorganisms happily multiplying in that pond, nourished by the influx of dust particles, which in turn love to travel on droplets carried with the "cleaned" air back into the room. Yay! - If you already decided to go with forced airflow (by means of fans), perhaps you might want to experiment with vacuum cleaner bags (perhaps cut them into mats and fit them into custom frames), or commercially available replacement air filters and their frames, possibly from the automotive industry.
@@Anvilshock you are right, I think the water based filters would be a good way to breed legionella bacteria. They certainly increase the room humidity to unacceptable levels, as does those water based evaporative coolers. ( Horrible things).
In my experiments I used a pair of metal speaker mesh grille as the earthed catcher electrode. I could have used one and some of the mineral wool used in cooker hoods, but my concern was the dust becoming a fire hazard. In my tests the dust built up on the mesh and fell to the bottom of the box where it could be periodically sucked out with a vacuum cleaner. Care was needed in opening the box, lest the fine trapped dust was puffed back into the room as a dirty noxious cloud. I did not run the experiment for long as the plastic of the box turned black with ingrained dirt, maybe because the plastic used to make Tupperware has its own surface charge. It was not the most attractive contraption,. But it did prove the principle.
As an idea, you could add two ports to the dustcatcher housing, each with a cap. When it comes to emptying the catcher, you attach your regular vacuum cleaner to one while the other one acts as a high-flowrate purging intake. That way you could leave the whole thing assembled while still having convenient access to emptying the thing.
We used to have a big version of something like that hanging from the ceiling in the smoking room at work, many years ago. No pyramid design and obviously no paper on top, but a similarly shaped base and mesh. It was designed for removing smoke from the air.
When you are a kid and want an air ionizer on christmas haha
I wanted a variac lol but never got one I'll try this year 😉
I asked for a trabant to when I was five. My parents had no idea what a trabant was.
I remember back when getting a flash drive with 64MB was top of the line XD
I asked once for a G807 but Santa was out of...
@Penguins Forall LUXURY! The first hard drive I bought (for my employer) was $5000 and 10MB.
For anyone playing along at home: acupuncture needles can be found on ebay for next to nothing and have an incredibly fine tip. You may want to experiment and invest in a name brand options if you want long lasting tips though - the cheapie batch I purchased (to clean the nozzle of a clogged 3D printer) claimed to be stainless steel but turn out to be highly magnetic...
"Controversial"
If Clive covered this and I missed it, its early. But is there a set number of needles per volts I noticed both units looked to have 5 needles, I watched his unit he made his folks, under the sink it only had one needle.
The main advantage of using lots of needles is that as one gradually gets eroded or furred up with dust the others take over. I made a version with a single needle for aiming at a wound, but usually use a bunch of needles in a hedgehog style.
Now I'm picturing someone doing acupuncture with electrically charged needles. Probably been tried before, at someplace like Guantanamo Bay.
@@tncorgi92 its how people are tortured with car batterys most of the time ^^
Awesome video, I always wondered about the practical functioning of these. I actually bought a few ionic breeze devices for my parents, they worked wonderfully to improve the air quality in their house, unfortunately, their pets shed way too much hair and quickly overcame the intakes.
Also, I love that bit at 14:45 after counting 21 capacitors "That's odd..." Thanks Clive, we really needed you to tell us that 21 was odd.
It really was odd. Most multipliers have an even number of capacitors.
My grandma had one of the later models of Ionic Breezes that were updated to fix the excess ozone production and it worked really well. She was a heavy smoker and it really did wonders for getting rid of the smoke and the smell. After she passed I used it for when my allergies got to the point the meds stopped working and it worked amazingly. Still have it but haven't used it in ages though.
As a kid we had one of those pyramid style ionisers (without the crazy mat)
Thanks for the nostalgia
"Before christmas was even finished, I had it open."
That sounds a lot like me as a kid. I'd play with my toys until I was bored with them, then disassemble them. My dad got mad at me for it, and asked me why I was doing that, and I replied simply "I was bored with it and now I understand how it worked." He was unable to come up with a cogent reply.
Sadly, I have yet to come up with one that will work reliably on NA mains. My next attempt will involve trying to create a custom current limited step-up transformer (thats probably a bit ambitious...).
My dad not only encouraged that behavior, he helped. I was never done until it worked again.
Im glad you mentioned the lighty up pink Himalayan rock salt lampy thing. My mum bought me one (cost a fair chunk of money) saying the lady in the shop said put it in a room with electronics and it will take away all the headaches and bad feelings caused by said electronic devices. Crap, I said. Its a lump of salt with a light inside it, at best it will slightly dehumidify the room but start melting in the process. So its sat in my kitchen and lo and behold. it has started leaving salty dribble marks down the wooden bit and done sweet FA to anything electrical. Besides the only thing it could do to electronics is have a corrosive effect if it ever got spludged onto them. LOL. 1 - 0 to us electronics enthusiasts against wacko hippy grass munchers.
Ah, that would explain why a colleague at work has one of those things on her desk. Until this video I had no idea what it was supposed to be for (thought it might have even just been decorative, but I should have known better, given its owner!), but yeah, no surprise it's some quack nonsense :)
"Let's look at this appliance!"
*spends more than half the video giving a detailed explanation of what said appliance does prior to teardown*
I love you, Clive.
I built one of these for 120V (Bag of 100 caps and bag of 100 diodes from AliExpress was like $5 delivered). The caps and diodes are all soldered together deadbug style (no PCB) in a long rod type form, reinforced with hotmelt glue, and stuffed into a 1/2" PVC pipe for a case. A few resistors (in a bit of vinyl tubing for add'l safety) and tied to the emitter.
The emitter was a bit of aluminum flashing cut into a star shape with very sharp points, and it works fine in as much as on dark, dry nights you can see a faint purple glow at the tips and it makes bits of tissue paper fly around from the static buildup. Could likely be better/more efficient but it works!
Been meaning to try adding a second electrode like the Dezac just to see how it would perform. Alternatively, I might modify my room filter to make the inner metal mesh of the filter element the opposite electrode, and have the ion generator near the filter unit inlet, so the crap gets caught directly in an air filter with some forced circulation. Hmmm!
Something that sits around, hisses, and makes an awful mess? I had a GF like that once, too.
What was her name?
Kitty.
Haha you made my day . . .
Did you manage to train her to shit on sheets of paper?
@@robinturner2300 i trained mine to use the toilet. Still doesn't know how to put seat down yet though.
You asked for an air ionizer for Christmas when you were a kid? And I thought I was a little goofy!
Electrical engineers are a really really weird breed.
When I was little I asked for a 12V battery.
I built an ioniser from a kit here in Australia. Works a treat... Even after 40 years.
2:27 😂 “Shit on a sheet of paper” 🚽
lol
Thank you for saying something about energy crystal salt lick lamps
I got one for a reasonable price*... as purely decorative object (was sold without claims whatsoever)
*= ~20€ ... which I probably would have had to pay for any other decorative lamp, too
@@MrMegaPussyPlayer Yeah, they're really neat looking. I like them. I've just shied away from getting one, in case people thought I was buying into the claims. (To be clear, I'm not saying that they don't have benefits, as I truly have no idea if they do or don't.)
@@xenonram Stuff what other people think. If you think they look cool and you want one, get one.
@@skunkcabbages5040 I find a good ale cures what ales me.
Fossil98 fair enough, had to like that comment, you cheeky little shit
Those ones in Egypt are obviously broken.....
Not true! The dust collects in Sahara! works 10/10 ;)
touche'
It's because people stole the pointy bits at the top.
Aliens did it!
The batteries ran out years ago! Now if only they'd thought about solar power!! 😂
I had a very old one with a fan and ultraviolet lamps inside, oh the air blowing out smelled so good! I miss that thing!
Years ago, I bought one of the small Ionic Breezes (integrated plug like a night light) and used it very briefly. Visibly and audibly arcing in there made me nervous to leave it unsupervised. As it was plugged in in the bathroom, I was not about to continually monitor it. If I want to try again, it will be something Big Clive approves of.
I know less than nothing about these things but was interested in your story about your workmates adverse reaction. Any time we have had a cheap ionizer at home I get a headache within 5mins. Everyone gets pissed, says Im mad and just looking for attention. VERY interesting - I must check out something like the Mountain Breeze (smoker, asthma and cats so I could do with something!)! Thanks Clive!
I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit, upon the slitted sheet I sit.
Around the slitted sheet the shitted sheep slept
I was also fascinated as a kid. I wanted one too - they were in Argos at the time (the beige Mountain Breeze). I just wanted to take it apart and see how it worked.
Many thanks. I have a similar one without the metal grid base that I bought probably 20 years ago. I will dig it out of the cupboard and get it back into use. It has an orange neon, which I never liked! I reckon these could be designed as part of LED replacement lamps, especially downlighters. Now I know the current is in the order of microamps I can leave mine running continually. I will chop out that neon...
If you shit it on a seat of paper, you will see the shit stains around it. I dig it. Cheers
Its 616 am I had to type this out 3 times to get it right.
Shut the shutters and sit in the shop.
Sally sells shit stains down by the shell store
If you shit on something, you'd better see shit stains. A lack of shit stains means your shit's teleported away and it's scavenger hunt time.
They are healthy for you.
Dyslexia can be though to live with.
You can make it!
Yeah, but the rock salt ones taste good. Go through one every few months.
are you a moose in disguise?
Very intriguing and interesting video Clive
Had one when I was young. Recall the needles could make interesting blue glow in the dark. I also recall the mess could be hard to remove.
14:40 I didn't realise these things were filled with jelly beans!
Speaking of low voltage powered ones, check out the Ioncare GH2151. 40mm muffin fan, tiny UVC lamp, positive spring tensioned corona wire before the negative collection plates, and the carbon fiber bristles also negatively charged, IE electrically in parallel with the plates. Oh and the potted HV supply has an adjustment pot for the output voltage. The HV is current limited to about 50 microamps short circuit, so it just barely pegs an analog multimeter on that range. The one I have was left behind at a rental property.
The amcor ionisers came with an indicator. It was a neon bulb that was mounted on a pcb with a capacitor. Similar to the screw drivers but it would flash when held (grounded).
Like Mr Clive I persuaded my parents to buy one. I still use it, the carbon fiber thread in low light gives mini static 'bolts' and makes that high pitched static noise when you place a finger near.
About 20/25 years on and it's still going. Model Multi 6/8, I'm guessing the highest version has 8 stages of filtration.
I have been considering something along these lines to serve a function in a fine dust particle separator. Managed to build a pretty good separator out of random things I had around and a lot of care with measurements. However more fine dust than I like is still finding it's way into my HEPA filter that sits at the tail end of the system. The idea I was thinking of is to use a small box to house an ioniser after depositing into the main dust collection bin, basically sitting in line between bin and vacuum source. Just worried the effect isn't fast enough for the intense air flow needed to serve as proper dust collection.
I long for the days of the crt television sets. they were the perfect air cleaner. If you ever opened one that had been working for a long time, you would find a massive amount of dust and dirt packed into the high voltage area.
Right up to the point it caused anode tracking.
Having worked on old CRT TVs. Gaming computers put them to shame. Can clean one and then a week or two later it already has a layer of dust building, very small but it seems to grow exponentially.
My first experience of an ioniser was touching one of the needles, that certainly woke me up with a zing... :P
The tape holding the wires that go to the Neon is interesting. Only the tape that is 'exposed' turned brownish.
I have a potted ionizer module which runs on 5V, the output do want to be arcing to the 5V input side so I think the 5V side is tied to 1 side of the output transformer, I guess we could just connect the 5V side to earth so it will create a better imbalance between grounded surfaces and the high voltage output?
I got to build on of these winter in Kansas is cold.
I need one of those ... well something kinda like this ... might to have to build it myself....
In the early 60's I read an article in Popular Mechanics or mag like that about ion propelled helicopters of the future. Ever notice those futures never came? So I built one out of aluminum screen and an array of needles. The power supply was external. It never lifted off, but made quite a breeze. Current limiting resistors, we don't need any stinking resistors. Had my parents only known the stuff I worked on.
Lifters. They're nice in theory, but require a lot of force to counteract gravity. They'd also put out a lot of ozone.
Awesome video Cliveik
Thanks!
Thumbs up Indiana USA.
haha I just yelled out "No don't!" at a youtube video when you decided to test-touch the needle
Wow I use to have one of these when I was about 14 and was fascinated with ionizers and ozone. Good nostalgia. I remember I used to touch the pins and my radiator (ground) for fun to make sparks and get shocked. I am not a smart man.
I don't know Clive. If I found myself shitting an ionizer, I think I'd be fairly concerned. I'm guessing I would be pretty prompt in my visit to the ER to make sure I wasn't going to shit out any more small household appliances. Then I would probably get around to finding out exactly how it got in there in the first place... :-)
You gave me a good laugh.
Don't go shitting out any small household appliances now.
LOL
Mushrooms or the LSD. Would be my guess.
@@manitoba-op4jx Better out than in!
Ionizers...yep..have had a few myself and was always wondering how come some gave the mountain breeze effect while others did #ff all...I was always hoping to find a way of keeping my vinyl dust free...vv informative informative vid
Clive, we do also have household 240v in America, primarily for large appliances. But I doubt anyone would ever think about using it for such physically small things as an ionizer.
Watching this while modifying my ioniser. Gonna give it a precipitating surface.
16:13
It can sound counterintuitive to say that the neon's resistor was in fact *over-rated* but that doesn't stop it from being correct. It only takes a few seconds of thinking before the pleasing moment when the penny drops and then you can't wait to tell everyone.
For dust collection I prefer Fan with a water , and non- sudzing soap..(laundry soap to break the surface tension.. wondering is grounding the water would add to it tho..
Making my parts list now.
No PCB even needed....
www.bigclive.com/ioniser.htm
Cool! Thanks.
If you need a dust-free "Clean-Room" where you don't spend a lot of time then this kind of unit can be quite useful to keep dust particulates to a minimum.
You've just bought back a long-lost memory with that Dezac.
I'm 95% sure that my Dad had a similar model in his office. (he was a manager in a shopping center in the 80s).
I remember seeing the pyramid with the needles sticking out, and he explained what it did. Well, not quite in the detail you've gone into here, but I got the gist. lol
I knew it probably wasn't a good idea to stick a finger near or on the needles, but I of course did try it once, and the current was incredibly low.
I'm guessing the pyramid was available without the grid + paper? I don't recall seeing that at the time.
You can draw sombrero’s really well 😂👍🏼
Fascinating! I also just realised that THIS might help massively with my allergies! Any recommendations, range from £35 upwards....any better to spend more? Thanks Clive!
Curiously, I also asked for an ioniser for Christmas (in the 80s, from DAK industries in the states)! Mine was fairly sealed, though, so I didn't try taking it apart until a couple years later when it started arcing between the emitter and collector (this was an oval cylinder with the midsection as the collector and one side of the tilted top as an emitter with a fibre pad doing the emitting -- wish I could find a photo).
During the pandemic, I've been keenly interested again in ionisers, as I found a study that showed active ionisation as extremely successful in preventing virus transmission in mice. I've been thinking of building powerful ones with separate collector plates (ideally self contained and hanging on an opposite wall) to have friends and family install in their homes and local restaurants put in to keep themselves safe.
Its weird that this hasnt been spread the word, as it kills viruses
Have you considered modifying the unit to increase the length of the path from the needles to the mesh? Block the existing holes and drill some more round the top? Add an insulating square spacer to jack the pyramid up? Make it from perspex and you could see the works safely.
I've mentioned my old pyramid ionizer before, it was black, and about 2/3 of the way up, there was a carbon fibre like 'string' made by Amcor, and it came with this strip of PCB material with a bulb on, that you held with your finger & thumb on pads on the PCB, it was kept on my desk, about 2 ft from my bed, and the sooty marks would form around it. My parents bought it to try and help with my asthma, which was an issue as we had a coal fire, and no central heating in the house at the time, what are your views on this for asthma issues Clive?
I think they do have a distinct effect on cleaning air, so that should help with asthma. The big Amcor units had a transformer and multiplier in them.
I used to put my finger very close to the 'string' and turn my bedroom light off, and could see and feel the purple sparks that it emitted. Next time I'm back in Yorkshire, I will see if it's in my dad's loft
I would keep it away from myself. Those charged dust particles stick very well, probably also to my lungs.
I picked up one of those Ionic Breeze things from a thrift store. I'm not really sure if it ever worked right. I need to open it up one of these days.
"beige", we had it, it was off white and gradually got beiger as time went by!
Given the low current draw, I feel like you could design a battery powered version.
Would a joule thief be powerful enough for it? 2nd thoughts, maybe the power supply has to swing negative for the voltage multiplier to work. I also wonder what an increase of frequency would achieve.
Clive I hope you don't mind but I listen to your videos when I can't sleep. Very soothing. informative as all hell but I never make it to the end. Sorry and thank you.
That happens to a lot of people. Some use my videos to help them sleep.
I assumed a Yank would just have to add one extra multiplyer stage to make up for the 120 volt U.S. mains. Then I remembered I/R. Definitely a voltage doubling transformer first. Thank you for jogging my brain.
Regarding negative vs positive it helps to remember that all electrons are negatively charged so they are always chasing positively charged atoms to make that atom neutral. Conversely protons are positively charged and are always chasing negatively charged atoms to become neutral. Charge is quantized thus a system won't necessarily achieve neutral atoms (there is resistance). It also means free electrons can be trapped in an atom at high voltage or called electrically charged ionization. Or in other words it increases the negative charge of an atom because electron is just another way of saying negative.
in the US all homes have two separate 120 volt lines going into them so they can be combined to create 240.
120 is often not enough for quite a few applications most older homes will have 240 sockets in there basement it might be a good place too put an ioniser. I wonder if the uk ones would run okay at 60hz.
Just to avoid certain replays i'll mention a lot of people have the misconception that one line is 240 and one is 120 but that is not the case
The important thing with the ionizers is the reference to ground. It doesn't matter if you connect it to a 240V in the US. It's still only 120V to ground.
They will run slightly more efficient at 60Hz as the impedance of the capacitors is lower.
ChrisD4335 z
It probably wont be efficient to run voltage multiplier ionizer from two phases since you want HV between ionizer needle and ground. Chinese have negative ion generator modules and they most likely use switching transformer instead of diode-capacitor voltage multiplier so they can be run from low DC voltage
If we're being real specific, one line is +120v at the same moment the other is -120v, referenced to ground they are both 120v tho
I've got an ionic pro, which was a clone of the ionic breeze.
They do seem to help with my roomate being allergic to everything, and the plates inside do seem to collect a fair amount of stuff out of the air...
It has three super thin wires at the back and three plates inside that are removable for cleaning.
We had it too close to him and he kept getting shocked while using his PC because it kept charging him up
I wonder if something like a small fan behind a filter with a shroud pulling air across a set of these ionising needles would work well to contain the mess and maybe improve the efficiency. Anyone had a go or got any insight?
Blueair does that in addition to their HEPA filters. Before the air enters, they ionize the air and then pull it through a metallic grating.
Nice video Clive, just wondering if you've received the KiloVolter and Avo MultiMinor I sent?
Yes I have, thanks.
bigclivedotcom OK, cool
I'm still learning about ionizers but correct me if I'm wrong but isn't a jacobs ladder effectively the same ? Positive or negative ? Hmmmm.... I'm still learning 👍 great vid again 😉
The commercial grade ioniser we installed where i worked had a small pcb with a neon on it, one end of the pcb had a pad to hold, it was used for checking if the ioniser was working
Alternately you can get electrostatic meters, i have one, it's set up with an antenna to see if i can detect charge in the atmosphere from approaching lightning.
Isn't it to do with electron flow (not conventional) ?
Some of the detectors also have a small capacitor across the neon to make it pulse.
What would you suggest for controlling dust in a plastic cyclone - piped with pvc? Its high velocity - with a 5 horse motor. I think the static is causing the particles to cling and not drop out. Thank you!
*Electrostatic Precipitator!*
(I want something like this!)
Any chance of a treatise on static electricity for ionizing and dust collection?
Sharper Image
Shart-er image... haha
Terribly high shutter speeds, though. No gentle motion blur.
Anvilshock Whoosh
I suppose so.
Could you open up a Philip's hue ke light? They claim they run at under 5w, wondering about the wifi too
this tech is so cool! ...... one thing though, what would that do with nearby electronics? ... and can it build up high voltage charges on nearby ungrounded metal surfaces?.
It's best kept away from electronic stuff and it does cause a charge build up on adjacent surfaces. If you hold your hand near the needles it charges your body up and you get a static zap from grounded objects.
Do you know any good options for an ionizer on the cheap that will work within the US power standard? I have an extremely dusty room and this kind of thing would be potentially very helpful in mitigating that situation...
for the non mesh type, would it make more sense to mount one of these pointed down/upside down over an easily cleanable surface (or a dollar store/poundland rug that can be trashed) to keep the area cleaner?
I've seen it recommended to put an ioniser near a potted plant... the airborne crud collects on the plant where I guess people wipe it off the leaves which they find more pleasant than dealing with the skidmarks you get on your household surfaces otherwise. probably enhance the effect by earthing the plant pot with an anti static strap or similar but I haven't tried it.
The direction the needles are pointing isn't very important imo - if you want a preferential crud collecting surface you'd put an earthed metal mesh or similar on the opposite side of the crud catching surface to the ion generator.
Presumably a different Ion Tech to the one that built those very good ion mills used in electron microscopy? (They were justifiably famous for their saddle-field ion beam sources, with their very rapid beam abrasion performance!).
Don't underestimate the power of the plastic pyramid's role in cleaning the air and balancing your chakra.
Shame these devices have had any beneficial properties utterly smothered by quackery nonsense.
Quackery such as "balancing your chakra" comes to mind, xP
Chakra Khan? Doesn't it rock you?
i got 2 fans with tiny modules in them and a single hv lead going to the air output of the fan i think its about 1w or 2w
Those ioniser modules are very common. They generally have a carbon fibre brush on the end.
Could this be turned into a stationary vacuum cleaner substitute? Collect the dust before it can settle everywhere else?
what would happen if you took three 12v 2amp psu's cut the ends off all 3 and then put the three +pos together and the three - neg together and plugged all 3 into a 3 way ext lead ? would you be getting 36v 2amp / 36v 6amp / or a fire ? . cheers
You would theoretically have a 12v 6A supply.
So that faint purple glow would be plasma then, cool!
If you boxed one of your ionizers with a super quiet fan on one side and a HEPA filter on the opposite side, with the ionizer needles between them, would that result in air filtration without making the local area dingy?
Also, I would love to see you design a home 120v electronics kit we could build an ionizer ourselves with.
Would it benefit this model at all if you reworked it & had a little carbon fiber brush coming out of the top?
That would be a huge improvement.
An up to date version would be Air purifier / ionizer Viktor, Stadler Form.
So you're saying that all you need to make one of these right, is to have a low volume fan + a dirt trap that's in the way of the needles and the exit from a tube?
Clive can you Mod this one with a needle where the neon is and demonstrate the way it collects dirt/dust on a piece of paper. Compared to how it does with the needles on one side. Cheers Garry.
The reason why a negative charge is used is because both Carbon and Oxygen have either half or more of the secondary ring of electrons filled (2,8,8....) which basically means they gain negative charge easier as the atoms want to fill those electron rings more than it wants to lose the electrons from the rings
Clive, for those of us wanting to buy an off-the-shelf ioniser, can you recommend what to look for?
It depends where you are in the world as the traditional ones tend to be for European voltage.
Chinese trading sites have negative ion generator modules they self contained so you only need to add an enclosure for a device, they probably have switching transformer inside instead of diode voltage multiplier since they come in 110V and even 12V
You’ve just gota love a big Clive video!! 👍 so Clive I know you don’t work for “Which” but to put you on the spot, in your opinion best ioniser???
Tricky these days, since my preference is for old fashioned multiplier based ones
good vids .any chance of more projects?
You mention that 110V units would require 'double the stages', but it actually only requires one additional stage? That's why they're called Cockroft-Walton Voltage DOUBLERS
Nope. Each stage adds one more multiple of the original AC p-p voltage it's not exponential.
Ok. I think I'm gonna shit on a seat of paper too now.
I remember buying an ioniser in the late 80s for my 2 year old who had allergies, I was itching to pull it apart to see what was inside but missus banned me from doing so. Never know what happened to it but I know it did something because I recall the dirt collection along the front of it. I recall there was a sort of silk string across its front and I put my finger near it when the room was semi dark and I saw a gentle blue spark. Interesting stuff. Can you still buy these things??
You can find them on eBay second hand. If the string along the front was black then it was probably carbon fibre string.
Another awesome vid there, chap! Always wondered how ionisers did their thing, and now I know! :-)
Now, I wonder...Would it be possible to build a battery powered one? (Perhaps still using a mains lead for ground reference only. :-)
Oh hang on, what am I saying? Ground on a battery driven unit would be with reference to the cell(s) powering it! An external ground would be both irrelevant and useless in that case! :-)
(Guess who hasn't had enough Covfefe this afternoon! ;-)