take it to the extreme, make a SMT one, just a thought
http://www.flickr.com/photos/21963395@N03/sets/72157603491589765/detail/

errrrrrr......... welll........ hmmm.....

 

you can make inductor from any kind of wire, any kind of metal.
But why would you want to?

Just get some coils, toroids etc.

If you don't want to invest money, get them from a TV set, USB wire, CFL, boombox, you name it.

Or use a MCP1640, this is a SOT23 IC with 6 pins.

I made a jouletheif from a magnetic core memory toroid.
These are very very small. I have thousands of these here.

Same as for toroids or inductors. These are total mass products. They make millions of them. Why bother about them? I understand it's cool to salvage some magnetic core from a CFL etc., but it makes only SUCH an impact... 0.01% of these are salvaged, ever. Or is it?

 

Two more:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yakone22/5876131889/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nike6/3812268855/

The toroid actually was taken from a boombox which I found on a junkyard.

 

Take apart a scrap PC power supply and you will find toroids and many other useful parts.
I even save all the screws. Nothing gets thrown away in my neck of the woods.

 

you can make inductor from any kind of wire, any kind of metal.
But why would you want to?

Just get some coils, toroids etc.

If you don't want to invest money, get them from a TV set, USB wire, CFL, boombox, you name it.

Or use a MCP1640, this is a SOT23 IC with 6 pins.

I made a jouletheif from a magnetic core memory toroid.
These are very very small. I have thousands of these here.

Same as for toroids or inductors. These are total mass products. They make millions of them. Why bother about them? I understand it's cool to salvage some magnetic core from a CFL etc., but it makes only SUCH an impact... 0.01% of these are salvaged, ever. Or is it?

referring back to the circuit diagram, do you recommend me changing any of the transistors?

I will be using a solar panel that is about 2-2.4v and only 1 single 1300mAh rechargeable battery.

Thanks for the help

 

Bare wire is not used to make a transformer or an inductor. It will short the circuit. Instead the wire has an enamel coating as its insulation.

you said that bare wire can not be used to make these joule thief?

I got this from here:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/2007/weekend-projects-with-bre-pettis-make-a-joule-thief/

but on some other pictures, I see that there is a plastic coating on. Im confused about this?

On the other hand, I will be ordering thses parts from ebay and I can get started with these

but I have encountered another problem. See my latest post about if I should use the transistors from the circuit diagram or the ones the person(from page one) recommended me?

Thanks in advanced.

 

you can make inductor from any kind of wire, any kind of metal.
But why would you want to?

Just get some coils, toroids etc.

If you don't want to invest money, get them from a TV set, USB wire, CFL, boombox, you name it.

Or use a MCP1640, this is a SOT23 IC with 6 pins.

I made a jouletheif from a magnetic core memory toroid.
These are very very small. I have thousands of these here.

Same as for toroids or inductors. These are total mass products. They make millions of them. Why bother about them? I understand it's cool to salvage some magnetic core from a CFL etc., but it makes only SUCH an impact... 0.01% of these are salvaged, ever. Or is it?

I just found this!!!!!

http://www.maplin.co.uk/high-current-toroids-3631

thing is, it has only 1 wire but I do have a massive roll of wires(about 400 meters )[dont ask where i got it from... ]

I can take out that wire and replace it with two wires(with the plastic coating stuff on as well )

 

All the wires in your photos of ferrite-core inductors have enamel insulation.
Transformers are also made with enamel insulated wires.
To connect to the wire then some enamel must be removed from the ends.

I "stole" some wire from an inductor in a 2-way speaker crossover network and it also had enamel insulation.

 

but I have encountered another problem. See my latest post about if I should use the transistors from the circuit diagram or the ones the person(from page one) recommended me?
Thanks in advanced.

Well I made one a while back with BC547, it has a continue rated dc current of 100mA and 200mA peak current, it seen to work fine (no magic smoke)

So yours will work fine, but if you want a robust one, replace the transistors.

Here is my 2c.

 

For regular LEDs and low voltage, you'd have difficulties obtaining more than some 10mA.

I have run a 6V bubble LED from 5V, using just ordinary 2n2906.

You don't need to change transistors. However, if you experiment on breadboard, you'd find some transistors work well, some don't work well, while others don't work at all.

One more jouletheif attached. This time it is a real transformer on a toroid. Just you can see how small they can be built.

Don't expect too much from solar cells unless they really get full sunshine.

By the way I used a PNP jouletheif here to power a small PIC circuit. Output capacitor = 470nF.

 

All the wires in your photos of ferrite-core inductors have enamel insulation.
Transformers are also made with enamel insulated wires.
To connect to the wire then some enamel must be removed from the ends.

I "stole" some wire from an inductor in a 2-way speaker crossover network and it also had enamel insulation.

Sometimes the enamel insulation is very thin, that is why on some of the photos it looks like there is no coating but in fact they do have them but it is hard to tell

Going to order some toroids today

 

I tried some Joule Thief variants for a solar charge circuit, but they're all very inefficient users of that precious little bit of energy coming from the sun. Finally, I just used enough solar cells in series to supply a good charging voltage, namely 11 v. in high sunlight to charge a NMh battery pack to 5.5 v. The 11 v. never really occurs because the battery pulls the voltage down to an acceptable level, but also make sure the solar cells don't supply more than about 0.1 C (battery capacity) to the battery pack. Finally, I put a 6 v. zener in parallel with the battery to shunt the charge to ground if the battery voltage did in fact get too high.

This scheme does no good when the sunlight is dim, but I found that overall, I get much more charge by eliminating the inefficiencies of any step-up conversion process. Been working well for months.

 

I would monitor the temperature of the battery and at least add a timer as well