I next tried just hanging the device from a thread, with no balance or pulley. In this case, the only way I would see results were if the device were capable of lifting its own weight. Since it wasn't, no vertical movement was observed.

Some of the things tried were using an aluminum foil covered styrofoam ball in place of the copper disk, using a copper disk that had smoother the edges, putting a cylinder of rolled up waxed paper in between the dome and the disk to contribute to the dialectric.

On reading my lab book again, one interesting observation made with the rolled up waxed paper cylinder was that there was a tendency for the device to twist about its axis in the same direction as the waxed paper was rolled up. However, I made this observation in passing and did not followup.