Author Topic: Fun on the farm  (Read 5592 times)

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ruddycrazy

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Fun on the farm
« on: June 18, 2015, 11:06:51 PM »
G'day Guy's,
                   A few weeks ago found the cows decided they could just walk thru the fence and come crap in yard so got onto the owner of them and said time for an electric fence mate or I'm having rump steak for dinner. 8) So I had enough insulators and duly installed them on the fence and the next day Bill helped with the high tension wire I had here for the hot wire. He supplied a 240 volt fencer along with a 300watt inverter but I found it chewed through the batteries in a day.

                 Thought about that old Dick Smith fence kit I put together years ago so got it out and decided to give it a test. Well at the start it worked then started bridging in the high voltage transformer which is 250 turns of 0.25mm wire with 7 turns of 0.4mm wire. Well duly got on and wound up another only to find that bloody bridged out too. So wound another one and GRRRRRR same bloody thing. Decided to have one last go and found Murphy was around as only had enough 0.25mm wire left for 8 layers instead of 10. So did 6 turns on the primary to compensate. YAY it worked from the first ball and was throwing a 10mm spark gap nicely then several pulses of bloddy bridging then it worked again. Anyway left it running for an hour and it looked like every few minutes it would bridge for a few cycles then work again. So went and put on the fence and with my trusty $5 multimeter set to 1000 volts checked the hot wire and YAY the electric fence is working.

               The fence kit was featured in the silicon chip mag back in '99 so when I finally found the kits I got 2 of them and still have the second to build. Gotta say the circuit is a beauty based on a 555 with a LM358 switching a triac into the first transformer. Then 340 volts is put thru a 7uf cap then onto this high voltage transformer where 3.6Kv is the output. Must of soldered in and taken out that transformer several times and the circuit just keeps working.

              I reckon I will have to make jig for winding the next one as I won't stop until I get one NOT bridging. I reckon using a toroid for the design would of been so much better and bloody easier to wind too. As the circuit olny uses 50mA @12 volt it is purfect for this power pauper the idea is a set and forget project just to keep the boss happy as cows munching on young fruit trees has me sleeping with the dog.

Cheers Bryan

tanner0441

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #1 on: June 19, 2015, 01:50:24 PM »
Hi

I built a few fences and in the UK they specify 10,000V for 10mS  and from memory 5 joules max.

When I needed one in a hurry I used a 4 pole relay through the NC contacts and an electrolytic to control the pulse spacing and an old car ignition coil with a 0.1uF across the contacts  (to help the coil ring) used to pulse the coil.  Worked a treat keeping Stallions from mares, with enough left to run a fox wire round the hens.

Mind you it ticks on a MW radio for about half a mile.

Brian


clockmanFRA

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #2 on: June 19, 2015, 03:04:44 PM »
Here, in Rural Normandy, France, the locals reckon that Sheep take 10 hours to work out the electric fence is not working.
The local cows take 24 hours before they work out that they can escape, which is about once a week, so we don't get many speeding motorists around these parts.

Oh yes, Snails the edible sort, take 20 minutes to work out the electric is off, and then all 200,000 do a runner, says our man from the snail farm up the road.    :P
Everything is possible, just give me time.

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ruddycrazy

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #3 on: June 19, 2015, 06:20:49 PM »
G'day Guy's,
                    Went for a walk up the hill this morning and found it's still working nicely with the battery on 12.5 volts which aint too bad in my opinion as it was 12.7 volts went I installed it. My mate who owns the cows will be coming around with his fence tester gadget as he is keen to have a look at it after I told him of the current draw of the unit.

Below is a schematic of the circuit and T2 is the one for the high voltage so I reckon with another transformer or toroid a few more turns on the secondary should get a much higher voltage. I do think the southern nutter on that remote island may be able to shed some light on this subject too. 8)




Next jobbie is making up a circuit to monitor the pv panel and voltage so I can see how it performs over time and I will be building the next one with the thought of getting a much higher voltage so I can get a hot wire right around the farm.

Cheers Bryan

oztules

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #4 on: June 19, 2015, 07:19:15 PM »
To hot wire the farm, you will need to get up in the 500-600v range@25uf before you dump it into the transformer.

It is best to use a much higher turns L1 and use about 4uf across the transformer primary, this will shape the waveform much better for transmission, and noise, and shock in the output scr or triacs.

I make simpler more powerful units that have hit over 40amps@8000volts ( thats a lot of watts ). They use 1 transistor, and 5 triacs and not much else. They have run for the last 7 years at least.

The trick to making the power transformer is to use something big for a start.. I use microwave transformers.

Slit the thing apart, get rid of all the windings, we only want the laminates.
Make a former ( I use wood).... For the primary, about 18 turns of 1.2mm or more 2 in hand to take up the width of the former.
For the secondary, about 230 turns.
1. Isolate the primary with transformer paper .
2. wind the first layer of 1 turn thick of secondary.. maybe 40 turns side by side, no overlapping... very neat.
3. put a layer of transformer paper over that, then wind the second 40 turns or whatever fits for each single layer.
4. Make sure you are about 3mm back from the edge of the paper with each tidy layer. This makes it very very hard to jump, as the spark has to get past the 3mm, then back in op the layer under or over it for another 3mm.... wont happen, even with 13000v they don't compromise.

5.When you have your 5 or 6 layers done, more transfromer paper on top, then tape it up.
6. Get some epoxy or lacquer and lacquer it. I use epoxy.....
7. Use more transformer paper in the E slots, and place the winding on the transformer laminates core. You want there to be transformer paper stopping arcing where ever there is an opportunity.
8. Re-weld transformer and your done. This should last forever if you do it neatly, and with purpose. I have not seen it arc.... ever, and thats testing to over 14000v.... there are quite a few out in the field, and our moist marine environment would show up the weakness very quickly.


..........oztules

« Last Edit: June 19, 2015, 07:23:23 PM by oztules »
Flinders Island Australia

ruddycrazy

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #5 on: June 19, 2015, 08:48:52 PM »
G'day Oz,
               Aint got no microwave trannies here as we aint used one at home since we bought the farm, but what I do have here are a heap of 1-5/8"x15/16"x1-1/8" toroids. These came off high voltage DC filter boards I scored close to a decade ago so I'm hoping they may be OK to use.

              Now one thing has these ol' grey cells going on T1 of the circuit the primary is wound on first but on T2 the primary is wound ontop. So with winding a toroid the primary goes on first ?

anyway a pic of those toroids



Cheers Bryan

Truds off to town to get some mower starter cord as Murphy is hanging around again and getting hammered for not mowing the lawn

oztules

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #6 on: June 19, 2015, 09:31:28 PM »
No, for the power transformer, you would be better off with a handful of rusty 4 inch nails than these torroids for the power transformer.... even the level transformer ( to make the 600v.. T1) would be a handful with those........... This thing will need handle over quarter of a million watts for u/seconds.... so it is going to saturate anything we use... but bigger is better. ( I have made one using a bundle of wire... it's ok, but lacks the raw grunt of the transformer when wound properly.... too much leakage, but better than nothing.)

When you went/go to town, you should go to the tip and grab as many microwaves as you can... very very useful. ( earlier models before the HF transformerless ones became available... ie if it is very light, no good for this application.... heavy means older style with big transformers in them.... good for lots of projects.

We don't want ignition coils types either, they are high voltage, but high impedance... they won't burn the grass off the fence (kill, not immolate) like the low impedance ones with lots of umph. The low impedance ones are good for 50 km or more of fence, the high impedance ignition coil ones are good for short fences, and or dry sandy ground that needs lots of volts to overcome the very high impedance dry sandy ground.... and still a short fence.

With the torroids, so long as the wire goes through the hole, it will work.

For a very tight coupled  e type core, a primary split on top and underneath the secondary is the best for tight coupling... only usually see it in pwm transformers to keep leakage down.
Ideally, the primary goes on last for the torroid for least leakage I believe.

Using Microwave transformers, I wind the primary on first ( 1 layer ) then the 5 layers of secondary.

Seeing as we are capable of very high current in the main transformer, a low impedance fence will show up a high turns secondary... ie works well on the bench, but sags severely under load... normally a sign of too many secondary turns... 200-250 seems to be enough... 600 makes the sag huge.. and thats with 1mm secondary... wasted effort that time. so more is not always better.

Will get some pics for you.


........oztules

Ps...... "southern nutter on that remote island "..... I resemble that statement..... I've made it to village idiot now, but had to spend a fair bit of time as second in line before the position became available.
« Last Edit: June 19, 2015, 09:35:31 PM by oztules »
Flinders Island Australia

oztules

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #7 on: June 20, 2015, 12:05:56 AM »
Ok, here is a pic of the fencer unit. It takes the 12v to 600vdc through that little ETD49 transformer it has two primary windings....well sort of.
One is for collector current, and the other feedback for the base drive.. so the entire oscillator is three components only.
Then rectify, store in a off board 25uf cap, then dump into the big tanny via that red coil with 4uf across the main primary ( two black caps ).
There is a voltage divider to tell the diac when to trigger, and 4 big diodes for freewheel... and thats it.



Here is the bit that matters. Look carefully at the layers with transformer paper between each  secondary layer.

Note the 1.8mm primary wire.... we want max current on cap dump. Thats where the power is made from your stored energy ( eg, the energy in a mars bar is a bit greater than a hand grenade... but the grenade lets the energy out over a shorter time frame.. so more instantaneous power... the mars bar kills you much more slowly for the same sort of energy). If you can dump the energy in the cap fast enough, you well be using hundreds of kilowatts for a very very short duration.... probably in the 250-450kw range, depending on the storage, and the transformer. The lower the input impedance, the greater the power for the same energy.

There is a catch ( there always is) If you make the rise time too short, then you run the risk of exceptionally high voltage, but suffer more reactance as any very high frequency ac wave form would... even though it is DC, it has a very sharp changing voltage wave front, and behaves like AC in propagation.
We use that red coil to slow down the current discharge into the transformer a little bit, this makes the propagation better, and the RFI lower. The two 2uf black caps across the transformer input are part of that filter.




..............oztules
Flinders Island Australia

OperaHouse

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #8 on: June 20, 2015, 01:37:32 PM »
A friend works for weld shop that has a HVAC side business.  He always has big HVAC units that are being scrapped.  Been scrounging the igniter boards oit of them to build a pest deterrent for the garden.  Nice little transformers but likely lack weed chopping capability.  They also have these current monitor boards that trip at 1.5A AC, a printed coil on the board and a riveted strap as the pickup.

ruddycrazy

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #9 on: August 20, 2015, 06:22:28 PM »
G'day Guy's,
                    Well those pesky cows went and found another fence to trash and earlier this week found 1/2 a dozen of them in the front paddock again so got on to the owner. On Wednesday while I was out he came around and put a new hot wire on the offending fence. All up about 800 metres going right to the boundary, I saw it yesterday so I gave him a ring where he said he didn't have time to trench the wires underground at the 2 gates. I did ask him if he put his meter on the hotwire where he replied $#|+yea mate 3800 volts along the full fence line which now would be close to 2K long. Anyway I took my DMM up and checked the voltage on the battery which I knew was just about shot. 12 volt 50AH agm battery was showing 8.5 volts and that home built unit was still working nicely  8)

                On another note he did say eh mate when are you shearing the sheep where I replied when I can find a friggin shearer, he came back with he knows a local bloke who did a few of his and he reckoned we could arrange for him to do mine. So came the problem of getting those ratbag sheep in the yard with only me and my dog. Well Ruff has been known to go off on his own and be a hindrance rather than help, so decided WTF lets give it a go. Within 5 minutes the sheep were in the yard and typically a dozen of them revolted and took off past me. This is where Ruff came to life and tried to stop one but when he saw the rest starting to head off he was off after them and turned them around. The sheep going down the fence line with the dog in tow and a bit of yelling from my department saw the sheep running flatout to get in the yards.

              So came the next problem getting a shearer, rang my mate who did did them last year after ringing the local guy with no luck only to find he was full bore into shearing and couldn't make it around for  3 weeks. Anyway the local shearer rang me back last night and all arranged to do them Sunday morning.

             Now with 8 merino sheep all of a good size it would be a fun job to get the fleeces into the bale but that old baling press I got taking space in my shed may just have to come to life and move up to the shearing shed. It is a 3 phase unit which fits my evil plans to a tee as I do have a brandnew 3HP Delta VFD here to power the press from the 5KVA genset I'll setup for the shearing plant.

          Well as far as getting employment  in this state has gone beyond a joke and that fascist govt we have in has decided to send everyone on the dole into work just to get the dole(slavery was outlawed more than 100 year ago but we are turning a full circle). Anyway if one can't beat the system may aswell join and exploit the system so in the next week I will be starting as a supervisor(slave master) hopefully on the project I started last week. 45sq meter of paving in front of the mance next to a church in the heart of town where a top job needs to be done and no one controlling the project has clue about civil work.

        Anyway a 4 1/2 day week along with a 16K break on tax meaning 34K before paying tax sounded pretty good and better pay than working in the trade, also I was told about this card where if one uses it for every purchase any tax paid is refunded. Did I say this looks like a good wicket, the only thing is I do feel for the workers having to do this for free, O'well slow and steady will be the order of the day and BBQ every week will be my way of doing things. I will take a few pic's once I know I have the 6 month contract as this would my first civil job and it will have to be a top notch job being in the centre of town.

       So only working 4 1/2 days a week will let me get back into the mold on the farm doing what I love tinkering and making low power stuff O and my 5 cyl radial engine......

Cheers Bryan

clockmanFRA

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #10 on: August 21, 2015, 03:53:18 AM »
Shearer's here in Normandy France are as rare as rocking Horse poo.

We have our own clippers, but the Mrs reckons I am a bit rough, so she cuts and I hold the blighters down.

Photo shows the 'RougeWest' in the Orchard while the main fields are being cut for hay.



 Sold them all last year and got a good price, plus they are brutes and kept running me over and my Rugby days are well and truly gone.  Getting a new flock next year that are a smaller breed from Brittany.

The cow/sheep dawwgg. in his frequent position, ............

9049-1

Told my neighbour that if his cows come in my field or garden again, its the carbine, then the chainsaw and we will invite him to the barby Q. He looked at me, puzzled for a moment, way-ing things up, "ha ha " he said. Next day him and his labourer were putting in new fence posts and new barbed wire.
They think I am the mad Englishman.

Next doors dairy herd went for a promenade along our local roads a few weeks back. I heard screaming, went out to investigate and came across a family of Parisians in a Range Rover stuck in the side of the road with the herd around them.
I sent my youngest 8 year old boy with a stick, and he sent them all back towards the neighbours farm, freeing the Parisians who then just drove off at speed.

Unfortunately half the 60 odd herd headed for the next village, the rest, me and the boy put back into the milking yard. Never did find out what the Framer was up to.
 
Everything is possible, just give me time.

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ruddycrazy

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #11 on: August 21, 2015, 07:32:58 AM »
G'day Guy's,
                    Well hooked up the vfd and sure enough the wool press worked as it should so decided to get it out of my shed and try and get it to the shearing shed, thats when the fun started  >:( it was tad heavier than I thought and my ol' 48hp fiat tractor with the lifting jib found it a bit too much. Anyway got it down the hill close to the wood yard and after the bloody went over, got it back upright then decided bugger it parked it at the rear of the wood shed and it will get it's own shed. Still close enough to the main shed so I can run a cable down for the power.

                 Those pesky suffock sheep well 1/2 doz thought they would brake out but when Ruff came up behind with me by the time I up 1/2 way up the hill Ruff had them jumping back in the yard. Gotta take a pic of Ruff and I'll put it on here to keep the farm theme going.

tanner0441

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #12 on: August 21, 2015, 10:18:01 AM »
Hi

About 20 or so years ago I had a smallholding on the lower slopes of a Welsh mountain. I had Suffolk sheep, a pig, and a cow. We had the cow AId and finished up with a bull calf, a bull calf that was almost hand reared, so people did not phase it at all and being a Limousine cross could jump like a steeple chaser and frequently went for a trot up the lane.

On one of these occasions myself and the 10 year old step daughter were bringing it back, Helen (step daughter) was driving it along the road with a stick, the animal was reluctant to turn into the home road, so she ran round it and gave it a whack and turned it. Next thing there is a screaming of tires and a very irate tourist is bellowing at me if I see that child hit that animal again with that stick I will..... and threatened to bring the animal welfare down around my ears. I said she is 10 years old and unlikely to hurt it.

The calf who had had all the attention distracted from the job in hand had gone to investigate his car and the possibility of food. The scream from the guys wife caught our attention followed by get it out, get it out. The calf by now had both front feet on the drivers seat, and the guy shouting shoo and waving his arms. I couldn't resist it I said "Ask it nicely." I walked over poked my thumb and fingers up the calfs nostrils and dragged his head round and Helen continued up the road. As a parting shot I looked at the family and said we wont hit it too hard and bruise it, we intend to eat him....... Enjoy your holiday.

Brian

Frank S

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #13 on: August 21, 2015, 11:21:10 PM »
most city folk if they have lived there all their lives should never ever stray outside the confines of their high rise apartment complex. They don't deserve to breathe the same air as outlanders.
I live so far outside of the box, when I die they will stretch my carcass over the coffin

DamonHD

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #14 on: August 22, 2015, 04:20:16 AM »
A relative used to have consistent complaints from (presumably townies) who moved in next to the farm complaining that it was noisy and smelly, and maybe that it was full of animals.

And yes, I've guided a few cattle with sticks and shouts.  I don't think I've come anywhere near hurting a ton or more of skittish beef, and would hate to anger one.  I've been accidentally trodden on a few times, but never attacked.

Rgds

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Bruce S

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Re: Fun on the farm
« Reply #15 on: August 24, 2015, 04:19:29 PM »
Damon;
From one who has been run across the field!
Let me tell ya, you know your speed and endurance when a PO'd bull is 5 feet from your backside and gaining!!
You quickly become able to leap small ponds and slow mooing heffers ! ;)

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