I'm at the end of my wits after spending the last few hours trying to work this out, so bear with me. I have the following circuit:
My resistor is a 47k resister, my D1 and D2 are UF4007 diodes. My transistor is also a TIP31C, while my L1 has about 8 turns and my L2 has about 400 turns, with a 9V battery. However, what I am finding is that this circuit simply does not work -- most of the time, when I measure voltage across L1 and L2, I get a value that makes sense -- L1 is about ~0.02V and L2 is maybe ~0.6V, meaning that I am multiplying by the ratio between the two, so I know that something's happening.
I have, however, gotten it to work once, briefly, for about a half second, where it lit my 13W CFL lightbulb.
But now I'm finding a much bigger problem. My voltage has dropped. Everywhere.
I'm using the 9V battery -- the voltmeter reads 8.3v across the battery, but ~0.6-0.7V between ground and any position on the circuit, including, but not limited to the topload, either end of L1, either end of the resistor, and directly between the positive wire and ground.
Yet I can also return the voltage to normal -- if I remove L1, then voltage across the circuit returns to normal.... But then the circuit won't work anymore because... Well it needs L1 to work.
So now I'm stuck -- L1 seems to drop my voltage down from ~8.4V to ~0.6V, everywhere.
I'm stuck, and google isn't helping.
Other information:
L1 is wound clockwise, L2 is counterclockwise Topload is a styrofoam ball with aluminum foil around it L2 wire is 30AWG and L1 wire is 24 L2 is wrapped around a 1/2" PVC pipe and L1 is wrapped right around L2.
So yep, Google isn't giving me anything on this. Any help would be appreciated, as I've been working on this circuit for the last week, and I'm hitting a dead end here.
Thank you.
