New Member seeking help with a small SSTC ...

jdub1581hv, Sun Jul 12 2015, 10:05PM

Hello all I'm new to the forum and appreciate it(forum) and all of you. The invaluable information and experience is awesome and again thanks for being around!
Apologies up front for long post...

Quick intro:
I have roughly 15years of Carpentry and General construction experience, specialize in Tile and Stone work, and am a complete tech junkie .
In my years of construction I have had to do quite a bit of electrical work, ie: Panel(sub) work, and standard outlet, switch, and appliances.
I recently within the last 2 years started to teach myself electronics/programming. Have modded several devices such as xbox controllers(led's, rapid fire etc), Tablets (simple mic in jacks, oscope probes(diy) with the intent to have a wireless remote/testing device via bluetooth or wifi. So I am fairly familiar with how circuitry works, though many things still beyond my experience.
So to sum it up, I enjoy challenges to the mind and working with my hands ... So why not build a TC .. :D

I currently have 6 small coils,

1 micro wound approx 400t #40 on a plastic thread bobbin dia: 3cm - height: 4cm -- primary 6t #18 solid tight helical.

1 mini-mini 500t #36 on M&M-Mini container/tube with 4t primary #18 stranded

2 mini with 700+ t #33 (20 - 27 cm tall - 3.25cm dia & 2.7cm dia) with different primaries: 4turn flat spiral / wide helical / or conical #12 thhn stranded

1 mini 2k turns #40 plastic vacuum attachment found on the street (I don't know why either) 3.25dia 20cm tall 3 different primaries: 1)20t bifilar - 7cm dia #18 solid - 2) 20t tight wound #18 solid - 3) 16t bifilar flat coil (shared among all) 1/2 #12thhn other 1/2 1/4" copper tubing for tapping at different locations

1 mini fatty 750t #40 wound on plastic container about the size of a coffee mug dimensions are cubic 7.5cm dia, 7.5cm tall, and 750turns - primary 6t #12 thhn stranded tight or large flat bifilar.

I have been using the basic slayer exciter circuit 4 paralleled 2n3055 with secondary lv end providing feedback to the base. I can get some ok performance for an exciter, but I would like to be able to have it break out with more than a 1cm arc. Power supply is a 22v 75va transformer with a full wave doubler for 32v out 2 +amp?

I believe most all should be able to produce 3-4" sparks .. perhaps not with that transformer, I also have a mot rewired for 36v (haven't used yet because it hums quite a bit secondary is wound as tight as possible.. had to clamp it together) that I will move on to for the higher current capacity.

I salvage most of my supplies form tv's and other electronics. I have a pretty good amount of power mfets for some atx supplies i found on craigslist .. 6 matching (3 pair) 900v enhancement mode NPN's, 6 matching SD20N60 mfets, as well as about 8 1500v HOT NPN's from the tv's.

I also collected all the smps controllers and have 3 of these Drivers.
I have tried to make a 1/2 bridge with one of the drivers, followed the datasheet and added zeners (tail to ground) where needed to help protect the chip from my higher than 12 supply.. (6v on pwm, 12v on phase/ pwr in). I want to avoid buying any driver chips as they don't teach you a thing... I had those drivers on an old 9800gtx+OC gpu..

When running the circuit, I get 0 output for any of the coils and the highside fet heats up really quickly. My guess is that the driver is not well suited for this purpose? seems powerful enough.


Could any one point me in a good direction for making a driver from discrete components or from a tl494, mc34065 / mc34067(HIGH PERFORMANCE ZERO VOLTAGE SWITCH RESONANT MODE CONTROLLER) I can sort-of understand the datasheets, I'd like to think the 34067 would be the ideal chip (from broken plasma tv) Opinion on that? advise on how to move forward from the slayer circuit?

Thanks in advance!

Not the current slayer driver in the pic..