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Registered Member #2553
Joined: Fri Dec 18 2009, 01:36PM
Location: St Cloud Minnesota
Posts: 97
i have a question regarding how to connect a line filter to a tesla coil. I have attached a picture of my filter. I have it connected as it is labled; line to mains and load to the coil. I read today that it should be hooked up the opposite way on this site(bottom of the page):
the way I have it seems to work ok. just looking for some input on this. thanks
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
I would never connect a line filter to a Tesla coil, especially not a solid state one. The common mode choke doesn't help at all, it can only make things worse.
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
A large portion of the secondary current flows capacitively to the primary, and in a solid state coil, the primary is AC-coupled to the input terminals (live and neutral). Connecting a common mode choke to such coil causes a large voltage to develop on the choke (as it is designed to have large inductance) and so on the DC bus relative to ground, which can result in internal damage of the IGBTs, GDT/CT spark over, damaged control electronics etc. For such coil, it is best only to use the phase-to-earth capacitors (usually rated "Y").
For an SGTC this might not be of such a big concern, anyway I would remove the common mode choke if you can.
Registered Member #4074
Joined: Mon Aug 29 2011, 06:58AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 335
Sorry to resurrect an old thread for such a simple question, but it's been bugging me. I have been working away on a small SSTC in my spare time (quite sporadically). I had planned the input power section to consist of a typical common-mode EMI filter on the AC side, with a single high-amp diode to provide half-wave DC pulses to the bridge. After the diode there is a series RF choke and a 2uF MKP decoupling cap across the DC output and neutral, with another smaller cap coupling the neutral to protective/RF earth (this cap is obviously redundant due to the caps in filter before the diode).
After discovering this thread I presume it is best to leave out the common mode choke on the AC side, and just have 3 Y class MKP caps coupling live neutral and earth together? I also presume the RF choke in series with the diode probably isn't critical either, since the 2uF cap should direct any RF to the neutral and then to earth via the class Y cap, so the diode shouldn't encounter any trouble.
FWIW, with regards to EMI reduction with SSTCs, especially high power CW ones, I've had excellent success with Class-Y and Class-X capacitors to RF couple all the mains conductors together. I placed one filter assembly at the coil's wall plug connection and another at the wall outlet of sensitive electronics in the area. I can run my large SSTC full power at a distance of less than 2 meters from my electronics with no interference problems.
Depending on the inductance of the RF choke you may want to leave it out. I find parallel capacitance to be far better at blocking TC related noise than series inductance anyway, given that there's so much capacitive coupling going on who's to say a series inductance will even do anything when you consider the inherent parasitic capacitances bypassing the inductor.
Registered Member #4074
Joined: Mon Aug 29 2011, 06:58AM
Location: Australia
Posts: 335
Sigurthr wrote ...
FWIW, with regards to EMI reduction with SSTCs, especially high power CW ones, I've had excellent success with Class-Y and Class-X capacitors to RF couple all the mains conductors together. I placed one filter assembly at the coil's wall plug connection and another at the wall outlet of sensitive electronics in the area. I can run my large SSTC full power at a distance of less than 2 meters from my electronics with no interference problems.
Depending on the inductance of the RF choke you may want to leave it out. I find parallel capacitance to be far better at blocking TC related noise than series inductance anyway, given that there's so much capacitive coupling going on who's to say a series inductance will even do anything when you consider the inherent parasitic capacitances bypassing the inductor.
Thanks for the reply, I'll leave out the common mode choke itself and just capacitively couple the three mains conductors. The RF choke on the DC side of the diode isn't very large. About 12-14 turns on a ~26mm OD (T106 size, IIRC) yellow/white 'mix-26' iron powder core. Calculated inductance is somewhere around 12-18uH, and my multimeter agreed. Hopefully it's small enough that no large voltage will develop across it. It probably won't have any effect on performance at all, I just threw it in as an afterthought. If there's any problems it won't matter too much, since I'll be switching to a full-wave smoothed supply eventually.
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