Hello,

In your schematic for the 555 oscillator, R6 is way to small.
You would like to keep the discharge current below 15 mA.
Make R6 1K and you will be safe.
For the other values, you could use the calculator on this site:
https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/tools/555-timer-astable-circuit/

I did some playing with values and got this:



Bertus

 

@bertus i didnt even know that a calculator like that existed. many thanks that will definitely come in handy. also thanks for the values.

I decided to go with 30hz for now, might change it back in the future. the above circuit works great, when the button is pressed the output lamp pulses 4 times, whilst the 555 timer continues to generate a clock that i will use elsewhere. so i have two questions regarding this circuit. #1 is does anyone see any major problems or ways that i could improve it? to me it almost seems to complex for such a simple problem. #2 is why does the circuit only work when i have the LED attached? I've tried pulling the output both high and low with different resistance values which failed the simulation, however when i added the led everything worked great. thanks.