A schematic of the Infinity Starter:
This schematic wasn’t designed for other people to consume. It’s purpose was to give me something to look at while I was placing and wiring up all the parts. I’ll share it again if I add more clarifying information.
In 2016, I started the first build of the Infinity Drive. The intent was to make a 12 volt lead-acid battery charger that used whatever charge remained on the battery to charge it up fully. I designed a control circuit for it, and ordered all the parts, but never completed the build enough to know if it actually worked.
As far as I know, Thane Heins invented this device, but what he called it (The Bi-Toroidal Transformer) is a misnomer, and despite wanting to give credit where credit is due, I will not be using this terminology going forward. “Bi” implies two and the desired operation of the device simply cannot be accomplished with only two toroids. Three are required. It is a Tri-Toroidal device.
Rather than finish the original battery charger, I re-designed the device during the Covid-19 lockdowns during the spring of 2020. The purpose of the redesign was to orient toward practical power levels rather than simply a proof of concept. One unexpected thing I found is that the size and power levels of the device have practical limits. With normal 600 Volt wiring and steel laminate cores, the device is limited to about 15 kilo-volt amps and about the size of a soccer ball. My current “final” design is about 7 kilovolt amps. If you want more power, it is simply not possible to build a single huge one. Using high voltage wiring, it would be possible to pack more power in a smaller space by going higher in voltage. Practically speaking, the best way to gain more power would be to build multiple small ones. I think there is no limit to how small the devices could be made (with correspondingly lower power levels). I imagine the device could be scaled to go in a watch or phone, pacemaker, etc. It would be possible to make them into the form factor of standard batteries, and make a battery that never needs charging.
It is possible to design them for different output voltages. The first one being built (the Infinity Starter) will have the capability to switch between multiple output voltages (12V, 48V, 60V nominal). These are all the voltages that are planned for the near future, and as per suggested by the name, this first device has starting circuitry that will not be required to replicate in every drive going forward. I should be able to use this one Infinity Starter to get all the future coils going without the special starter circuitry. For those technically minded, the starter circuit is an astable mutivibrator with frequency tuning controls connected to an H-bridge capable of handling the output voltages and frequencies of the Infinity Drive. I could not find an off-the-shelf H-bridge capable of handling both 100 Volts and 100 kiloHertz, so I’m building one with high voltage bipolar junction transistors. Most power transistors are either MOSFET (low voltage) or IGBT (high voltage, low speed). The older BJT technology is less efficient, and I have to use multiples of them, but they can handle both the voltage and speed.
So why do I like this device and why I do I think it is worth my time? Well, this device is part of a whole class of devices that could be referred to as Lenz’s Law avoidance devices. Most of these devices rely on switched inductance. This includes the QEG, the Dynaflux Alternator, and Paul Babcock’s various devices. In comparison, the Tri-Toroid is much simpler. It has no inductive switching, and no moving parts. No custom machining required. This makes it cheaper, more reliable, and more accessible to experimenters around the world.
Why has no one done this before? I’m not entirely sure. When I look at the videos of replicators, I generally see two basic problems keeping their devices from achieving practical power levels with the people who have the geometry correct: Most are using mains frequencies. At such low frequencies, the device would literally have to have about a meter squared of steel, and weigh somewhere around 8000 kilograms to deliver home-sized power requirements, so these experimenters are seeing only a few watts of power. Other replicators I have seen seem to know about the power/frequency relationship, but they tend to use audio amplifiers to source their input signal. That is fine for what it is, but requires an expensive piece of kit that is limited to hundreds of volt-amps at best, and can be replaced by a tank circuit. Universally, people seem to think that a high-frequency transformer must have a ferrite core. It is possible to use steel, but cooling requirements will be greater. I am using 1 mil thick steel laminate commonly sold as roofing material for the cores because of its low cost and wide availability.
The issues with the tank circuit are being able to control the current to limit runaway conditions and to regulate the output voltage to a fixed level. This is straightforward conventional engineering. My designs may not be the best possible designs, but they do improve on what has come before, and with the simplicity of the overall device, I feel like this device properly distributed to the world, could initiate a new age of energy independence.
Audio-frequency replication:
Thane Heins’ tutorial on the theory of the device: