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Registered Member #1732
Joined: Thu Oct 02 2008, 02:34PM
Location: Huntsville, AL
Posts: 112
I posted about my DRSSTC V back in 2010 ... Since then I've updated it a little bit. I cut out all the crappy bits, and i put in one of Steve Ward's Universal Drivers (V3). I also went from 120V power to 240V ... the results were pretty neat, so I thought I'd share...
Registered Member #146
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 04:21AM
Location: Austin Tx
Posts: 1055
Is the UD3 a official and public thing now or reserved for Ward and friends? ;)
The UD3 got a qcw-like mode?
I'm considering making it more available as time goes on... reasons for keeping it more private for now is that it's a rather complicated beast, and i don't have the motivation to support too many users. If people think its worth the cost (i think the BOM is nearly $100 USD + the need for a Cypress PSoC Programmer) and aren't scared off by the words "serial communications" or "microcontroller programming" or "TQFP soldering" then I'm usually pretty happy to put it into the hands of a caring Tesla Coiler . I'm not going to get rich off selling tesla coil drivers (especially complicated ones), so my only motivation is to see what others can create.
The UD3 has been used in basically all types of solid state coil. Main advancements are digitally controlled phase lead, pulse skip (aka freewheeling) current limiting (which allows for long pulse duration even with ground arcs), phase-shift bridge modulation for QCW, and the use of a serial interface which can allow things like directly sending MIDI data to it. It uses a Cypress PSoC 5LP as the brains.
It's a neat chip, but certainly has a lot of undocumented quirks and i often run into limits on the programmable logic. There is likely a more capable chip out there now, but years of development have already been invested and "it works".
Registered Member #1732
Joined: Thu Oct 02 2008, 02:34PM
Location: Huntsville, AL
Posts: 112
I can't find the post where I gave specs for this coil, only some of the earlier iterations.
-- I think only the small toroid on this coil is original to that system.
Anyway ... F0 on this coil is about 104kHz. I'm running a .15µF tank cap, and I think something around 12µH of primary inductance. I recently remade the primary supports from G-10, previously they were delrin which got a little bit melty on me. The G-10 is absolutely necessary now, as the primary gets in excess of 100ºC. The primary is pretty much the only thing aside from the secondary that gets notably warm though.
The secondary has a roughly 12" winding (some turns have been removed due to flash overs ;) ). The secondary is wound with #34 AWG. The secondary unloaded frequency is somewhere in the neighborhood of 140kHz
The bridge inside is comprised of 2 CM300DY-12NF bricks. I have the limiter set at 550A and it actually limits to about 640A (measured). To make the sparks in the video requires about 4kW (input current varies between 11-19A depending on spark loading).
Presently I'm limited by the ceiling in terms of spark length. As you can see from the video, once the bus voltage is turned all the way up, it has absolutely zero problems making 66" sparks.
Registered Member #1732
Joined: Thu Oct 02 2008, 02:34PM
Location: Huntsville, AL
Posts: 112
More testing... This time with low break rate and higher pulse length. Pretty neat results. Got the spark length up to six feet. That's a little more than 6 times the secondary winding length. Not too bad, I think.
If you click on the images below you can see the full 56MP image. Definitely recommended for the image of the coil flashing over
Things got a little hairy...
Pretty soon afterwards this happened:
No big deal really, just removed a few more turns and cleaned off the carbon should be good for more testing tomorrow.
Great job phil :) I bet that secondary still has some life left! Long powerful single-shot pulses are always nice to see. I've always wanted to do like a 'bullet time' thing to see the 3D form of a single bushy spark. Looking forward to more!
Registered Member #1403
Joined: Tue Mar 18 2008, 06:05PM
Location: Denmark, Odense C
Posts: 1968
Steve Ward wrote ...
Is the UD3 a official and public thing now or reserved for Ward and friends? ;)
The UD3 got a qcw-like mode?
I'm considering making it more available as time goes on... reasons for keeping it more private for now is that it's a rather complicated beast, and i don't have the motivation to support too many users. If people think its worth the cost (i think the BOM is nearly $100 USD + the need for a Cypress PSoC Programmer) and aren't scared off by the words "serial communications" or "microcontroller programming" or "TQFP soldering" then I'm usually pretty happy to put it into the hands of a caring Tesla Coiler . I'm not going to get rich off selling tesla coil drivers (especially complicated ones), so my only motivation is to see what others can create.
The UD3 has been used in basically all types of solid state coil. Main advancements are digitally controlled phase lead, pulse skip (aka freewheeling) current limiting (which allows for long pulse duration even with ground arcs), phase-shift bridge modulation for QCW, and the use of a serial interface which can allow things like directly sending MIDI data to it. It uses a Cypress PSoC 5LP as the brains.
It's a neat chip, but certainly has a lot of undocumented quirks and i often run into limits on the programmable logic. There is likely a more capable chip out there now, but years of development have already been invested and "it works".
Ok, enough thread hi-jacking.
You had me scared off already :) I can understand that it remains in a closed circle when its not a straight forward design that everyone from the street can use. You would have to sell pre-soldered/pre-programmed boards for it to make sense.
Registered Member #1732
Joined: Thu Oct 02 2008, 02:34PM
Location: Huntsville, AL
Posts: 112
Ran up to 7ms pulses today. Easily doing 72+ inches now. This coil is looking more and more like it was cobbled together now.
No ... your'e not seeing things, I did put another toroid on top of the toroids. My breakout point was "leaky" so I just took a spare toroid and plopped it up there, problem solved.
Hit the garage door opener ... oops. Fortunately it survived.
Registered Member #1732
Joined: Thu Oct 02 2008, 02:34PM
Location: Huntsville, AL
Posts: 112
Been a while since I updated this thread, and since the last update I basically rebuilt the entire coil. I've dubbed the new creation "Skinny Coil." This name is a play off of the name Steve Ward gave to his "Fat Coil DRSSTC."
I'm still using the same secondary (because I'm stubborn and don't want to wind a new one). The secondary has been burnt several times, and I've just rewound the *wrong* gauge wire on there every time :) The secondary resonates at 136kHz now with no spark load. The primary is tuned to 104kHz, and that's where it runs (verified by scoping primary current). I rebuilt my MMC with some beefier caps, and now it's up to .156µF. The previous MMC was .15µF, so this isn't much of an increase.
I got rid of the crap Delrin primary supports after they melted. Now I have G-10 supports. Unfortunately the G-10 wasn't enough to handle the temperatures reached by running 175A RMS, so I ended up water cooling the primary. The primary is much happier now that it has cool water flowing through it. The water cooling doesn't stop at the primary though. I had to water cool the bridge as well, since the heatsink was getting to 40ºC with <1minute run time.
I'm now running a PFC designed by Steve Ward. Water cooled -- of course. The water cooling system has around 1.5 liters of water in it, and is circulated with a D5 (strong) pump. This is fed through a 2x120mm radiator and I use 2x PFB1224UHE fans. If you're not familiar with the UHE series fans ... they REALLY blow. You can't run these fans on the bench without securing them, or they will blow themselves away. They're also incredibly loud. Good thing they're installed on a Tesla Coil, so the loudness doesn't matter ;)
The coil runs about 4kW average power. 360V bus, CM300DY-12NF full bridge.
Here's a crummy photo of the coil base: This photo was taken when the coil was being worked on so it's not completely assembled. You can see the boost inductor below the blue towel on the right side of the photo. The boost inductor typically is located directly behind the big water block for the IGBTs.
Photo of the water blocks: I used aluminum because it's easy to machine on the CNC router I have access to. Ideally I'd have used something like copper that is more compatible with the other metals in the water loop ... but oh well.
Here's a photo of a CM300 I killed because I had a loose GDT connection.
Oh and here's some video of the thing in action...
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DRSSTC V ( now "Skinny Coil" )
. I'm not going to get rich off selling tesla coil drivers (especially complicated ones), so my only motivation is to see what others can create.
