El Cheapo constant current Colloidal Silver Generator.
As mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I am going to reverse my current Dinamed CBD Kush with colloidal silver. I made my first batch of CS with a small constant current voltage supply, but I overcooked it and produced amber-gold liquid rather than clear. I was having trouble with my multimeter reading current, and/or the current limiting function of the voltage supply was not functional. I will never know, because I inadvertently plugged the voltage supply in with reversed polarity, nothing happened for about half a second, and then I smelled the smoke. Yup, I fried it. And it can't be replaced before I need my CS.
So, back to the drawing board I went. Here is what I came up with, in schematic form (don't laugh too hard now
):
The power source is the battery from my rechargeable drill/driver set. I used 12 volts, anything from 9 to 24 or so would also work fine.
My multimeter is a cheapie I have had for years, any meter that will read in milliamps will suffice. Exactly how to connect for measuring small amperage varies between meters, but pay attention because the low amperage circuit is fused and limited to small amperages, usually something ~200-400 ma. And the fuses are not easily found if you fry them. My fuse now has tin foil around it as both fuses I have turned out to be dead, and again, no replacement possible before I need the CS.
The liter jar with the silver wire is the standard setup, lots of ways to do it, details not important here.
The tricky bit with this setup is the large plastic jar with water in it. Any non-conductive container will do, just as long as you can get the wires at least ~~3 inches or so apart. The water in the jar is used as a variable resistor which can be adjusted to attain the ~1 milliamp current ideal for producing colloidal silver. Adjustment of current is achieved by changing the amount of wire immersed in the water, and/or the distance between the wires - deeper immersion or closer spacing = more current. This is easily done if the wires are clipped to the side of the container with paper clips like the ones in the pic below. I initially thought that salt water would be needed to provide the needed conductivity, but it was far too conductive and did not permit milliamps to be lowered at all. I ended up just using my irrigation water at about 50EC. Any tap water would likely do the job straight out of the tap. If conductivity turns out to be too high, start with distilled, and add just enough tap water to allow easy adjustment of milliamps. In my final setup, the wires in the water were small gauge steel immersed about an inch into the water, and about three inches apart. This was just wire I had hanging around, pretty much any bare wire would do.
To operate the setup, I adjusted the depth of immersion to get ~1 ma, and periodically reduced immersion to get amperage back to 1 ma. The key here is that as silver builds up in the solution, conductivity and amperage gradually rise. If you let the amperage get too high, the size of silver particles produced goes up and effectiveness of the end solution goes down. So, you need to adjust the wires periodically to keep the amperage in target range. I found that starting at ~0.9 ma allowed me to re-adjust after a couple hours. The CS solution was done in about 8 hours. At least I think it is... There might be just the tiniest visible amber tint to it, the ppm meter reads ~25ppm (silver ppm will be ~~twice what the meter says) and the laser beam visibility is strong. Amperage was never more than about 1.5 ma, so colloidal silver should be good. We shall see.
Here is what the rig looked like in operation, absent the water and CS solution:
And here is my fresh jar of CS:
And may the laughter subside before ribs are damaged.
Fire away with questions if interested in this mischief.
And before someone rags on me about the shorted out fuse, no it is not a good idea, but risk in this low voltage/ low amperage setup is low if handled with care. Shorting the circuit would just instantly kill the meter, and since I needed the CS now, I took the risk. This old meter is nearing retirement anyway. But not there yet since it continues to survive and function in spite of me.
Happy CSing peeps.
And lest anyone doubt the results, here are her balls a few weeks later:
And, here is the first seed I found in the lady fertilized by pollen from the above reversal:
The seed was in the one flower base I could not resist checking when I chopped the non-pollenated colas today. I am sure there are many more, but they will be staying where they are for a while yet.
Bottom line is that the CS from this generator arrangement works well. Given the modest cost of the silver wire, and the volume of solution it can produce, making your own solution is a no brainer IMHO.
So, back to the drawing board I went. Here is what I came up with, in schematic form (don't laugh too hard now
):The power source is the battery from my rechargeable drill/driver set. I used 12 volts, anything from 9 to 24 or so would also work fine.
My multimeter is a cheapie I have had for years, any meter that will read in milliamps will suffice. Exactly how to connect for measuring small amperage varies between meters, but pay attention because the low amperage circuit is fused and limited to small amperages, usually something ~200-400 ma. And the fuses are not easily found if you fry them. My fuse now has tin foil around it as both fuses I have turned out to be dead, and again, no replacement possible before I need the CS.
The liter jar with the silver wire is the standard setup, lots of ways to do it, details not important here.
The tricky bit with this setup is the large plastic jar with water in it. Any non-conductive container will do, just as long as you can get the wires at least ~~3 inches or so apart. The water in the jar is used as a variable resistor which can be adjusted to attain the ~1 milliamp current ideal for producing colloidal silver. Adjustment of current is achieved by changing the amount of wire immersed in the water, and/or the distance between the wires - deeper immersion or closer spacing = more current. This is easily done if the wires are clipped to the side of the container with paper clips like the ones in the pic below. I initially thought that salt water would be needed to provide the needed conductivity, but it was far too conductive and did not permit milliamps to be lowered at all. I ended up just using my irrigation water at about 50EC. Any tap water would likely do the job straight out of the tap. If conductivity turns out to be too high, start with distilled, and add just enough tap water to allow easy adjustment of milliamps. In my final setup, the wires in the water were small gauge steel immersed about an inch into the water, and about three inches apart. This was just wire I had hanging around, pretty much any bare wire would do.
To operate the setup, I adjusted the depth of immersion to get ~1 ma, and periodically reduced immersion to get amperage back to 1 ma. The key here is that as silver builds up in the solution, conductivity and amperage gradually rise. If you let the amperage get too high, the size of silver particles produced goes up and effectiveness of the end solution goes down. So, you need to adjust the wires periodically to keep the amperage in target range. I found that starting at ~0.9 ma allowed me to re-adjust after a couple hours. The CS solution was done in about 8 hours. At least I think it is... There might be just the tiniest visible amber tint to it, the ppm meter reads ~25ppm (silver ppm will be ~~twice what the meter says) and the laser beam visibility is strong. Amperage was never more than about 1.5 ma, so colloidal silver should be good. We shall see.
Here is what the rig looked like in operation, absent the water and CS solution:
And here is my fresh jar of CS:
And may the laughter subside before ribs are damaged.
Fire away with questions if interested in this mischief.
And before someone rags on me about the shorted out fuse, no it is not a good idea, but risk in this low voltage/ low amperage setup is low if handled with care. Shorting the circuit would just instantly kill the meter, and since I needed the CS now, I took the risk. This old meter is nearing retirement anyway. But not there yet since it continues to survive and function in spite of me.
Happy CSing peeps.
And lest anyone doubt the results, here are her balls a few weeks later:
And, here is the first seed I found in the lady fertilized by pollen from the above reversal:
The seed was in the one flower base I could not resist checking when I chopped the non-pollenated colas today. I am sure there are many more, but they will be staying where they are for a while yet.
Bottom line is that the CS from this generator arrangement works well. Given the modest cost of the silver wire, and the volume of solution it can produce, making your own solution is a no brainer IMHO.
- Next page: December 11 update
- Previous page: Germination results, Seedling progress
