WooHoo!!! Built and now just waiting for the toroid.
Posted: Sat Aug 17, 2013 4:52 am
I was away for work for the last week and arrived back last night... conveniently on the same day my kit was delivered. Being the impatient person I am, I proceeded to get to work immediately. Started with the interrupter last night and then started on the main unit itself this morning.
Biggest challenge I came across was finding materials to build a toroid so I could at least fire it up to make sure it doesn't immediately blow up
After a bit of research, I managed to locate some 50mm drain piping and decided to be creative with that. I could not locate any aluminium tape like that included in the kit though. All I could find was the stuff with a butyl layer on the back to aid adhesion for plumbing use. I decided to make do with that.
So far so good. It seems to work, but I didn't want to turn the power knob past 1/3. The last thing I want to do is blow the IGBT's. Mainly to save the hassle. I do have a spare set on the way though.
Only issue I have come across is the laser cut pieces that form the base. To sum it up, the front side (where the High Voltage sticker is) does not fit into the cutouts on the opposite side. This means that the board orientation can only go one way on the base. The end result of this is that the IEC connector can not be inserted into the cutout and secured well with screws. Not too fussed about this but it is an OCD thing for me.
I hope everything is functioning as it should and that it will produce the correct sparks when I have the proper toroid and drive it harder. I have a scope to test things and would be curious to see how out of tune everything is at the moment, but I lack a function generator, hahaha.
So now for some photos:
And some video (though no massive sparks):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccJQuKjZhlI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDM221EuC3g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV0GsKBLxII
Biggest challenge I came across was finding materials to build a toroid so I could at least fire it up to make sure it doesn't immediately blow up
After a bit of research, I managed to locate some 50mm drain piping and decided to be creative with that. I could not locate any aluminium tape like that included in the kit though. All I could find was the stuff with a butyl layer on the back to aid adhesion for plumbing use. I decided to make do with that.
So far so good. It seems to work, but I didn't want to turn the power knob past 1/3. The last thing I want to do is blow the IGBT's. Mainly to save the hassle. I do have a spare set on the way though.
Only issue I have come across is the laser cut pieces that form the base. To sum it up, the front side (where the High Voltage sticker is) does not fit into the cutouts on the opposite side. This means that the board orientation can only go one way on the base. The end result of this is that the IEC connector can not be inserted into the cutout and secured well with screws. Not too fussed about this but it is an OCD thing for me.
I hope everything is functioning as it should and that it will produce the correct sparks when I have the proper toroid and drive it harder. I have a scope to test things and would be curious to see how out of tune everything is at the moment, but I lack a function generator, hahaha.
So now for some photos:
And some video (though no massive sparks):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccJQuKjZhlI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDM221EuC3g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YV0GsKBLxII