It is a while since I've taken an ionizer apart. Yeah, I know some of you don't like it. I make ionizer videos because I make quite a lot of them. but I find this subject fascinating.

Others can't get enough of the ionizer videos, but what's interesting about these particular ones is that I bought this in a while ago I bought this one recently. They appear to have identical circuit boards inside and if I plug this one in to this safe adapter and I bring in a meter, notice it's got a little button to turn it on and off. This is so pointless I don't know why they do that. I'll just leave it where it's set actually here.

New test leads, new test leads with sharper points on them because the other ones were quite blunt. These are also slightly shorter test leads because the other ones were actually a bit too long as well. blunt and long. So if I ground the negative of the meters test leads and I bring the other one close to the emitters, it will show voltage a negative voltage.

and if I bring it up to about half an inch from the needle, it shows about 20-ish volts which is five times higher. Uh, ion output. I Guess than a conventional voltage multiplier type one? Maybe there's an advantage to using these little electronic modules. for those who aren't familiar already with ionizers, they apply a high negative voltage with respect to ground to either sharp needles, tingle, no, no tingle, dingo, no tingle or in the case of these ones, carbon fiber bundles which are very effectively, lots of tiny sharp needles.

And when you apply the high voltage, it creates an electrostatic charge in the ear that charges up negative. And when, uh, dust particles get also charge negative from the negatively charged air with excess electrons, they tend to precipitate out to what they perceive as grounded surfaces. and that could just be a wooden surface. What you wouldn't even consider to be grounded? It could be walls.

These things. If you plug this in a socket, it will create a bit of a mess around the socket, but all that stuff that's in the wall that's made the mess. Uh, I've got a picture of that here. Hold on.

I'll reuse this picture This This is an ionizer that's been sitting in a shelf in a slightly schmoker area, and if you you can see what it's precipitated around out of the around it, it's created quite a strange pattern. the process. That's what they do. They make a terrible mess, but hey, better on the table and walls than in your lung, lung, or lungs even.

Let's open this up. There's also an added thing with these because these ones have the emitters directly in the vicinity of the wall when you plug it in. Theoretically, there'll be enough of a ion flow. I mean it affects the short circuits the iron flow, but will create a little Trace level of ozone and ozone is villainized as being a terrible gas, but it's actually a natural gas.

It's part of air at low levels and is safe at low levels. Beneficial levels indoors because it gets used up quite quickly indoors. So this circuit board has what looks like a microcontroller and a power supply and then a tangler Transformer here and I can see what looks like a high voltage diode and capacitor, but they're all covered in silicone schmoo leading up to these electrodes here. So I'm going to take a picture of this and then reverse engineer and we can take a look at the schematic.

So one moment, please. while I do that, it has been D shmured. So let's explore. I Ended up taking the circuit board out of this one.

It doesn't really matter. there are identical circuit boards I can swap them between the cases if I desire. Interesting to note that the case itself has a little connector and the connector goes onto the circuit board to provide a power. It makes it very modular.

It's actually quite a nice design, but a bit odd because they've used a double-sided circuit board, but they didn't really need to use that, but they always use anyway. Every track, including this one here, uh, could have been done differently. They could have taken the capacitor over to this pin of the Uh rectifier and then just taking a direct link from here to here. It's very strange that they've done it this way.

It's A and there's also some secretary. Auditors Anyway, we'll get rid of the back of the circuit board here and we'll take a look at the front and I'll show you the key components of this. So we have a symbol capacitive dropper based on the main screen here, a capacitor here with a little resistor under it of undersized resistor under it, a bridge rectifier, current limiting resistor, a Zener diode clamp. that and then that basically charges up this capacitor and it Powers the microcontroller.

the other thing, a social Med controller. It's only using two pins. It's uh, well, three pins if you consider. There's a 2K resistor here just putting pin four to the negative rail.

that's presumably. well, that's very pick 12-ish because that's the pin that shows the programming voltage and there's a button going to the zero volt reel as well from one of the inputs and it also has a 100 nanofired capacitor across it. which is going to be a bit brutal in the context, but it's just basically the simplest to bounce circuit they could do and then the output. The one output pin uh drives the LED via a 2K resistor so not much current, but also another 2K resistor to switch on this transistor which then activates the high voltage circuitry.

The high voltage circuitry has a current limiting resistor here and one there and they've put in the option to put a standard surface mount non-surface map through whole ones there, but they've used to add two 10K resistors and then there's a wrecked at halfway rectifying diode and a capacitor that charges up 100 nanofarad quite high value in Sears the tiny little coil that's wrapped around the core of this Uh, two section bobbin. and they're using that quite high voltage for two sections and then there's what appears to be and this is the mystery component here. x04 I'm guessing it's a side act I've never come across a surface mount style that marked axle for I don't really know what that is, that's strange. Um, and then the output of that because that this will then provide from that transistor turns on, it, activates the circuitry and provides a stream of continuous pulses, and that Uh is rectified by a single high voltage diode.

Don't know what its rating is because there are the way they Mark these diodes. They don't put text on them, they put Chevrons and shapes, but usually just at one end just to basically avoid too much conductive ink. I guess I'm not really sure because that's high voltage, but that is then charging the 6kv 100 picofarad capacitor up and then there's a current limiting resistor grossly undersized uh, 10 mega ohm going to the output. and the carbon fiber emitters themselves are the little bunch of carbon fibers uh and a wire laid into a crimp crimped and then a bit heat shrink over it.

And for those of you want to make your own carbon fibrometers, if you go on eBay and find rules of the underfloor heating wire that is based in carbon fiber, when you strip it, it is a bunch of carbon fibers like that and it makes perfect images right here. Let's bring in the chromatic so you can see the circuitry in this in there. and The Oddities I was going to break this down into two section. There's not no.

I'll just combine it into one page so I'll zoom in a little bit more so we can get close and intimate with that schematic. The incoming supply has live, it feeds to sanctions of the circuitry. It feeds the capacitive dropper for the microcontroller, and it also goes via this resistor and the diode to start to charge the pulse circuit that pulses the Transformer I should perhaps shortly or linked by going like that. That's kind of how you show they're linked roughly.

Uh, the neutral comes straight into the direct fire and then feeds all the rest of the circuitry including the pulse circuitry. The power supply for the microcontroller is very crit and simple. It's a 50 ohm resistor preservator limit in Rush current. They could have put that on the other side as well.

Um, and there's a 5.1 volt Zener giving roughly 5 volts across this 220 microfarad capacitor and that feeds a microcontroller. It's not a commercial load. All that's going to power is this Led down here. I Shall finish the drawing, but draw the little bits and Led under.

the microcontroller has that resistor going to the zero volt rail 2K They've used 2K throughout for most of these resistors. In this area, the capacitor across the button that pulls to zero volt Rail and then that single output that doesn't just drive the LED to show it's active but also drives the base for transistor the transistor was. hold on I'm gonna have to look at this transistor. a One Three Zero Zero One Very standard transistor.

One Three Zero Zero One There is a back EMF protection dialed across that Anyway, even this transistor turns on. it, affects the grounds this end of the circuit. and uh, this resistor limits the current and this one limits the current and this half wave rectifies and it charges this capacitor up in series with the primary of the coil nut transform. And if you were to look at the end of that transform it such a shape like that with its uh windings with its two little bobbins.

but there'll be a little core and there'll be a couple of wires basically going up, uh, winding around that and then coming back down to other end either both at this end or both other end and uh, what it does is it charges and Sears that coil. but then this little component here, the Psyduck the mysterious what is it called Again, it's called the x04. let's just put xo4 there. x04 Odd.

Uh, but it when the voltage gets high enough across that capacitor, it shunts and it means that it basically short circuits across this egg, capacitor and coil. so it discharges the capacitor quickly. but the current it causes a current pulse in the coil. There is also yet another back EMF fish typed out flyback dial perhaps to to increase efficiency I'm not really sure, but anyway, it principles into that coil induces a high voltage in the secondary, gets rectified by a high voltage diode and the 100pico 6 KV capacitor 10 mega Ohm resistor limits current out to the carbon fiber brushes and there's two of them, so I'll put another one in there.

There is also a one Meg Ohm resistor just linking um between either side the Transformer and to be honest, I would have been tempted to put that resistor here instead because they could have done that easily in the circuit board. that I'll just put a Rea exclamation mark. So that's where I had to put that resistor just to provide a reference to the ground of the circuitry. Could be wrong though.

I wonder why they've done that? Hmm, odd, but that is more or less it. The fact is 110 to 240 volt means that ultimately on 110 volt, it's going to be slightly less spicy, but it's quite a zesty unit On surprising given the size of the Transformer and the Simplicity of the circuitry. but it's a zesty unit and 240 volts. so on 10 volts, all that will happen is that the capacitor will charge slightly slower or pulse less often.

You may end up with slightly less output than this. Uh, and that is it. A universal module I Wonder how many other ionizers it's used? You know we have to buy some similar ones and take a look inside them and see if they use the same circuitry, but overall, it looks like a proven design. It's so odd that if you look at the circuit board again, they have the option to put two capacitors in series or just one across there.

I Think they were just playing safe. It's very hard to measure the voltage across this because you'd need super high impedance. uh, secretary to do so and just sticking out standard meteor across is going to load it down So much because ionization takes like sub micromps, it's tiniest. a very low amount of air power.

If anything, I would guess that maybe a reasonable amount of the current consumptuous unit is purely just powering the pointless microcontroller and you could get rid of this. You could put a link across this transistor and just you could get rid of all that circuitry there. Um, and run this straight to through to neutral and the system would just operate all the time. It's kind of strange that they've done it this way.

You could even put a little LED in series of this because the amount of current is limited anyway and it would also act as the uh as the indicator. but they've They've got this thing about adding features that aren't needed on off functions for this: I don't think it's got a timer I certainly left it running and it didn't go off, but maybe it's got a long timer. it just there's not a lot of information. it's got instructions I could have translated it if I I'll do that now.

but actually I'll do it right now one moment please. Translated: no mention of a timer. All it says is you know, like this can be used to purify things and it's It's odorless and colorless and ions can you know? Purifying, cleanse and stuff like that and good for the body and all the usual crap that they usually put out. I mean ionizers do have that function.

They genuinely clean the air, particularly the ones where you mount it well away from a wall. but you can't really do this. but in the case of this one, I'll create a notable amount of ozone I Could have actually checked that just by. well, 80 in a box with that, although it kind of needs to be in the vicinity of a grounded surface.

I Could have looked at it through my camera because it's very sensitive I Can actually see the purple glow of the croon discharge and the needle tips. Um, but they do create an absolutely microscopic quantity of ozone, which has, uh, useful effects. but that is it. It's an odd thing, they've over complicated it most.

The circuitry is for this pointless button that turns the green LED on and off and turns ionizer on off. but the output is quite zesty. Quite impressive I wonder that all? Transformers wonder if you can get Transformers in their own, but interesting. Well worth taking apart.

Quite an interesting and spicy little ionizer.