By Bob Bridges
Lately, there have been statements made by PEMF device sellers that the ELEMENT Elite by Tiverton Audio is “low power” and possibly shouldn’t even be considered as PEMF. This comes out of our being honest when we state the real, continuous maximum magnetic field strength of 292 gauss while they make claims of much, much higher gauss levels. Actually, the opposite is true. The ELEMENT Elite can create the highest continuous gaussian field of any PEMF machine available to the general public, while their machines can only create a very low strength gaussian field.
That’s a bold claim. The evidence of this is right in front of your eyes, if you know what you are looking at, and if you stop to consider some fundamentals that you know but don’t take into account when listening to a sales pitch. That’s natural. You want to believe the sales person is being honest with their claims. Most of the time, the sales people don’t know themselves. They are simply repeating what they have been told. It’s extremely difficult for people to accept the truth when they make a living on believing a lie.
The first fundamental to keep in mind is this: Creating a high gauss magnetic field requires a lot of energy. You may not know how much energy, but it’s simple logic to know that the higher the gauss, the more energy it will take. You also know that a battery will not store as much energy as what you can get out of a standard wall outlet. Can you run a 100w incandescent light bulb off of a battery? No, you simply cannot get enough energy out of a battery to do so. Can you run a 100w incandescent light bulb off a power cord plugged into a wall outlet? Easily. Actually, one standard household circuit can run as many as 18 100w light bulbs. Always keep in mind that, no matter what the sales pitch is, no battery operated PEMF machine will be able to create anywhere near the strength of magnetic field as the ELEMENT Elite that has to be plugged into a wall outlet to power its 2500-watt amplifier. Always consider the source of energy used to run the machine itself.
Keeping the first fundamental in mind, the second fundamental is this: When making claims of a machine’s abilities, if a battery powered PEMF device is claiming higher magnetic field strength than we are, what’s more likely…we are falsely claiming too low of a number or they are falsely claiming too high of a number?
That leaves us with comparative claims between the ELEMENT Elite and other plug in machines…and the next fundamental to remember: A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Although we publish our amplifier’s power rating (2500 watts), most of the other machine makers don’t. So, we don’t know how much energy they are getting from the source, the wall outlet, to run their machines. The cool thing is, we don’t have to know. We can even give them the benefit of the doubt and accept they are using as much of the power source energy available to them from the wall outlet to run their machines as we are to run ours. We can assume this link in their chain is as strong as ours. Their coils are their weak link, and that’s right there in pictures for you to see. But you have to know a few things to see it.
Here is the formula for the magnetic field strength of a coil:
B is the magnetic field strength (measured in tesla, which can be converted to gauss by dividing by 10,000).
N is the number of turns in the coil (how many times the wire circles the coil).
µ sub o is the permeability in free space of the coil’s core (**see an explanation of permeability at the end of this article).
I is the current going through the coil in amperes.
R is the radius of the coil.
You could calculate the formula if you want, but you don’t even need to do that to see there is a relationship between N and I with B. If the value of N goes up, so does the resulting value of B. Likewise, if the value of I goes up, B goes up. To create a high magnetic field strength, you must have high current (I) and/or a large number of turns (N). If your current is low, you must have an even greater number of turns to make up for it, and vice versa.
Here’s a chart of the current capacity (in amperes) of wire:
With wire gauge, the higher the number, the smaller the wire. You can see from the chart that by going from 12 AWG down to 18 AWG cuts the current capacity in half. Remember, less current means less magnetic field strength.
Now let’s take a look at the ELEMENT Elite’s coil compared to a couple typical coils. You can see from the size of the coil’s plugs that I have scaled the images so you can see an accurate size difference between the three coils. Our coil is also shown with the cover pulled back so you can see its size more clearly.
Our coil is made with 144 turns of 12 AWG wire. Although it’s not easy to see in this photo, our coil is 1.625” x 1.625” (12 rows x 12 layers) You can see from the pictures that the other coils are not physically large enough to get 144 turns of 12 AWG wire in them. We can’t tell from the pictures if they use large gauge wire with a small number of turns, or small gauge wire with a higher number of turns, but we can tell that they can’t be doing both a large wire gauge and a high number of turns like we are. Their website lists their coil at under 3 pounds. Our coil weighs over 10 pounds! If I count just the copper wire in our coil (no insulation), the cross-section area is .738 square inches. Even if we assume the available power from their machine is the same as ours (even though we know it’s not), if they are using as large a wire (to be able to carry the current needed) they must be using fewer turns, which means their field strength would be less. When I scale the wire coming out of their plugs, and allowing that at least 50% of that is insulation just like with the wire we use, I find the cross-section area of just the copper in the other coils is approximately .081 square inches, or 16 turns (if they use 12 AWG wire). Conversely, if they are using the same number of turns, they must be using smaller gauge wire thus lowering their current capacity, resulting in lower field strength. The other machine makers don’t publish their power levels because they don’t want you to figure out the truth. Some of those sellers might counter with claims of extremely high-power output levels used by their machines hoping to explain how they can get the higher gauss levels with fewer turns of wire in their coils by using larger wire gauge and higher current. Don’t be fooled. First, we use every bit of the energy available from a wall outlet to create the maximum output levels we have, so it’s not possible for them to have power output levels greater than ours, unless they make you use a higher amperage circuit. Second, there is only so much current you can put through wire of any given size. The current capacity chart shows that. The physical size of their coil shows that if they are using a wire gauge even large than we do in order to have higher current capacity, the number of turns would have to go down even more to physically fit in their coil, so they would lose in number of turns what they gained in higher current capacity!
Now that you know the formula for magnetic field strength you can have some fun with it. Next time a machine maker is claiming they have the highest gauss levels ask them what gauge wire and how many turns are used in their coil. Then, go ahead and assume they are putting as much current through their coil as the wire capacity chart shows for the gauge of wire they are using and calculate the results. We’ve told you the structure of our coil so you can already calculate our magnetic field strength. If the other guys want to claim higher gauss levels but won’t back it up with the specifications of their coil so you can run the formula to see if their claims are even possible, ask them for a third-party analysis to verify their claims. If they won’t do that either, maybe you should consider dealing with a more open and honest company.
If what I have laid out is not enough, there is one more factor involved: The formula shows there is also a relationship between R and B. As R increases, B decreases. Our coil has an inside diameter of 8”. The other coils shown are listed on their websites as 15” (they don’t look that big to me, but they’re still bigger than ours). So, even if everything else were equal (which it’s not), their field strength is lower just due to their coil being a larger diameter. Bigger is better when you’re talking about the wire gauge or number of turns in a coil, not so much when it comes to the coil diameter.
Everything I have shown you also applies to battery powered devices. Their coils tell the whole story too, now that you know a bit about how it works. The same holds true for machines that use a mat. The size of the wire and the number of turns in the mat’s coils simply does not allow for high magnetic field strength. In all cases, it does not matter what their claims about the power of their machines are, their coils are the weak link in their chain. There are no weak links in ours.
All of the above doesn’t even bring in their weakest link of all…their frequency range. I’ve written about this in other articles but it needs to be mentioned again here when discussing the overall strength of their chain. None of the machines I discuss in this article will play frequencies above 50Hz. Have a look through the CAFL (Consolidated, Annotated Frequency List). You can see the CAFL here: www.electroherbalism.com. And the CAFL is not the only list. Virtually every PEMF list we know of include a plethora of frequencies above 50Hz. Look through as many PEMF lists as you can find. See how many frequencies above 50Hz are used for all manner of conditions. So, even if they could magically create as strong of a magnetic field as we can, they still can’t play the frequencies needed to address the real issues. All they can do is relieve the symptom of pain caused by the issue. Wouldn’t you rather go after the core issue, not just the symptom? The ELEMENT Elite plays the full frequency range, so again, there are no weak links in our chain.
**Magnetic Permeability
The best thing I can compare magnetic permeability to for you to understand it easily is conductivity. With conductivity, you know some materials allow electricity to pass through them better than others. For example, copper is a much better conductor than rubber. Magnetic permeability is a similar concept to this, but for magnetic flux (the density of the magnetic field) instead of electricity. The higher the magnetic permeability the better the material allows for magnetic flux to pass through it. Here is a chart of some common magnetic permeabilities measured in Henries per meter:
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