Re: Electrometer design? (fwd)

[Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxx>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 16:51:20 +1200
From: Malcolm Watts <m.j.watts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: Electrometer design? (fwd)

On 5 Jul 2004, at 20:04, High Voltage list wrote:

> Original poster: Steven Roys <sroys@xxxxxxxx>
>
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 06 Jul 2004 10:40:57 +0930
> From: Matthew Smith <matt@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: High Voltage list <hvlist@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: Re: Electrometer design? (fwd)
>
>
> > I am currently examining a design which appeared in the July 1999
> > Amateur Scientist section of Scientific American with a view to
> > building several. The circuit is basically a transconductance amp
> > which amplifies tiny currents which are then converted to a voltage,
> > rectified and peak detected. I suggest having a look at that design
> > and possibly throwing away the current set of electronics if it is
> > too difficult to repair (I suspect it isn't ;)
>
> I had a look at that and a few others - looks very interesting.  The
> Scientific American article is available through their site and is
> also on the Tinkers Guild Amateur Scientist CD, for those that have
> it.
>
> To me, building a fast rotating assembly is rather scary - I was
> thinking of building one of these myself, but may get the blade
> assemblies made by an expert...
>
> A device like this would top off the other environmental monitoring
> devices that I'm building quite nicely.

I thought about removing wedges of copper from ordinary Cu-fibreglass
laminate to make the disks (which leaves the disks in one piece).
Anyone see anything wrong with that plan?

Malcolm