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The Staccato seems to work fine with a pulse rate adjustable from ~2bps to 50bps.
But When I connect it to my VTTC, the coil is always ON whatever the blinking rate is.
If I disconnect the staccato, the coil turns off. Then if I apply +12V to the gate thru a 100R resistor the coil turns on, and it turns back off when I disconnect the +12V from the gate. So it seems the Triac works fine.
My Triac is a BT139-800G. It is mounted without insulation on the heatsink. A2 and heatsink are grounded and A1 is connected to the tube filament. Staccato signal is applied to the gate with reference to the ground (A2).
When I first connected the Staccato to my unplugged coil, I noticed blinking rate increased a lot (maybe because the Triac is drawing too much current). So I increased the value of R17 , I tried different values between 100R and 1K, with 220R the bps rate increases a little bit but remains within acceptable values.
Despite staccato's 0V is already grounded through the RCA cable, I had to connect it to mains ground directly, otherwise the output stays on as soon as I start applying HV to the coil. I don't like that much because it makes a ground loop.
Registered Member #3806
Joined: Sat Apr 02 2011, 09:20PM
Location: France
Posts: 259
There were two different problems which confused me and made it a bit hard to debug:
1) I forgot one solder on Staccato board
As the circuit seemed to work properly, I didn't checked it at first...
2) On the Triac side, I wired it improperly. I thought A1 and A2 were equivalent and could be inverted. As A2 is internally connected to Triac's case I wired A2 to the ground and A1 to the filament, allowing me to mount the Triac on heatsink without insulation. But that doesn't works, A1 must be connected to the ground.
So I used an insulated BTA16-600CW Triac properly wired and now everything works fine
The staccato allows me to run the coil for long times at 16.6bps But I must keep input voltage at 200V. If I push input voltage to 250V, current jumps from 2A to 10A due to MOT's core saturation and MOT heats rather quickly (after 10 minutes or so).
Running the coil at different bps rates gives interesting effects with different spark shapes and sounds.
I noticed that with some bps rates, sparks have a smooth sound, and at some other rates they produce a little bang as if they were striking to something. You can hear that in my video. I wonder what is this due to.
Registered Member #2939
Joined: Fri Jun 25 2010, 04:25AM
Location:
Posts: 615
I just thought of a potential problem with the MOC chip - it may not like the 1/2 wave 'DC' it will see at the cathode of the tube. Check the datasheet. There are many other similar devices, so if that particular one is no good ...
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[Fixed] Staccato problem
I wonder if the bang is caused by the staccato controller misfiring, so the burst doesn't start at a zero crossing?
