Kaizer DRSSTC II

Mads Barnkob, Tue Sept 06 2011, 07:51PM

My vacation was almost over and I felt like building a Tesla coil before starting at my new job which means a lot of travelling.

Link to my site with all pictures:

Its made from things I had at hand, everything but the driver board is salvaged or reused components / materials.

Bridge 2x IXGN60N60C2D1 IGBTs in a half bridge configuration
Bridge supply 0 – 210VAC through a variac, 6A rectifier bridge and 2x Aerovox 410uF 430V filtering capacitors in parallel.
Primary coil Flat primary. Inner diameter 70 mm, Outer diameter 187.36 mm. 6 turns 1.78 mm copper wire (2,5 mm²), turn spacing 8 mm. Tapped at 4.8 turns.
MMC 2 in series Cornell Dubilier (CDE) 942C20P15K-F capacitors for 0.075uF at 4000VDC rating.
Secondary coil 50 mm diameter, 2000 mm long, 1430 windings, 0.127 mm enamelled copper wire.
Resonant frequency Around 300 kHz.
Topload 40 x 215 mm aluminium tape on a Styrofoam toroid.
Input power 350BPS, 120uS ontime, 35 primary cycles, 280A limiter: 210VAC in at 2A, 420 Watt.
Spark length Up to 370 mm long sparks.

13th August 2011
Optimize driver PCB, design bridge PCB, toner transfer to PCB.

14th August 2011
Etch PCBs, assemble bridge PCB completely, half done with driver assembly. materials for building a enclosure and base is found.

15th August 2011
Winding CTs for feedback and OCD, building enclosure and base, driver pcb assembled.

16th August 2011
Driver PCB fault finding and testing, enclosure and base building.





17th August 2011
Complete construction and ran first test, no first light.





28th August 2011
First light, phasing of feedback transformer was wrong.

3rd September 2011
24 cm sparks, running 250uS, 68 primary cycles, 120VAC in, 268A primary current. 250BPS.





Here is a scope shot of the primary current waveform. Tuning is clearly way off.





4th September 2011
I blew up the bridge from running with a too high current limit, properly about 350A primary current at 160VAC in.

Future: rebuilding the bridge with larger IGBTs