Dec 13, 2008

• My goal is just to pick some components to order from DigiKey, so I can have the parts in time for Christmas, when my brother and I will work on this circuit.
• I don't have enough expertise to fully design a circuit, I really just need to pick an existing circuit or two, to build and learn from.

Dec 14, 2008

• There seem to be a lot of poorly-designed circuits out there. I need to at least learn enough to be able to pick a decent one.
• God damn. In the past, the only passive components I've paid attention to were resistors and capacitors, and did my best to ignore inductors. Well, (surprise!) this circuit is all about making an inductor as happy as possible.
• Q: I see that voltage multipliers work best when fed from an AC source. Hrm... the output of a flyback transformer is AC. I wonder how practical it would be to glue a multiplier stage after the flyback? A: VERY USEFUL. (hereafter referred to as "the thesis") (bonus: detailed circuits and test plans)

Dec 15, 2008

• The TeslaDownUnder.com guy is clearly trustworthy. However, the only circuit he gives is for the "Sparks for beginners". On the other other hand, I'm not shooting for anything rated in watts at the moment, so perhaps we're not shooting that high. (sheesh! :)

Dec 17, 2008

• Aha! The thesis uses an H-bridge configuration, just like motor drivers, and just like solid-state Teslas. So now we have a vast number of circuits to learn from.
• Nice. The wiki-hive-mind has distilled knowledge about ignition drivers here and flyback transformers here. Yes, it agrees the 2N3055 circuit sucks in many ways, but it's nonetheless a good starting point. And then it mentions the next several baby steps one should take. Whee!

Dec 25, 2008

• We'll be building this relay-based circuit (experimenting with various sizes of condensers capacitors to try to find one that both eliminates relay-arcing, as well as maximizes spark gap length). TeslaDownUnder suggests 1µF. We'll then build this IRFP450 (MOSFET) based circuit.
  • The relay was disappointing... only 1/3cm. Are we doing something wrong?

May 11, 2009

• We got the 555 section of the MOSFET circuit built. With the 390pF capacitor in, it should oscillate from 150 kHz to 1.8 mHz. We wanted to test that it's working using basic (cheap) tools, which boils down to using a speaker. But 150 kHz is too high for [[human hearing]]. Temporarily swapping in a 0.01µF capacitor in for the 390pF brought it down to an audible level, and success! it's working fine.