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I was thinking about making my coilgun on a PCB its current goes up to 200A peak (10ms) my idea is to make a 0.4 track and tin it thicker any ideas if it can stand it safely?
Registered Member #2099
Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1716
This is a good opportunity to discuss wire size rating for short pulses of current. The traditional approach is based on acceptable temperature rise from adiabatic heating of the conductor.
The important parameter of the current pulse is its "action integral", integral of (i^2 dt), in ampere^2 -seconds. The A^2-s rating of a wire is proportional to the square of its cross-sectional area, or 4th power of diameter. (There's not a huge ratio between D of a wire that gets suddenly warm, and one that explodes!) Some practical numbers and underlying formulas can be found in: From their tables, an AWG14 copper wire could withstand 47,000 A2s without damage to thermoplastic insulation. That's 217 A for one second, or 2170 A for 10 ms, or 21.7 kA for 100 us.
If your pulse were at peak amplitude of 200 A for the whole 10 ms, its I2t would be 400 A2s. But if it's a half-cycle of sinewave, I2t would be only half as great: 200 A2s. Could be handled by an AWG26 wire or equivalent area of PCB track, if allowed to cool between shots.
For lightly damped oscillations, the action integral builds up with each cycle. It's simpler to just figure the temperature rise, assuming that the entire energy from capacitor goes into heating the coil. You can look up the specific heat and density of Cu. As an unreviewed example, consider a single-sided PCB 4 inches in diameter, with 1-ounce copper foil, and 5% of the area etched away to leave a spiral coil. It would have about 2.35 grams of Cu. A 100 Joule discharge would raise the temperature by a tolerable 110 degrees C, dropping rapidly as heat is conducted into the laminate.
Thickening your tracks with solder would help, mainly because of the extra thermal mass, which is all there on 10 ms timescale.
Registered Member #509
Joined: Sat Feb 10 2007, 07:02AM
Location:
Posts: 329
Klugesmith wrote ...
This is a good opportunity to discuss wire size rating for short pulses of current. The traditional approach is based on acceptable temperature rise from adiabatic heating of the conductor.
The important parameter of the current pulse is its "action integral", integral of (i^2 dt), in ampere^2 -seconds. The A^2-s rating of a wire is proportional to the square of its cross-sectional area. Some practical numbers and underlying formulas can be found in: From their tables, an AWG14 copper wire could withstand 47,000 A2s without damage to thermoplastic insulation. That's 217 A for one second, or 2170 A for 10 ms, or 21.7 kA for 100 us.
If your pulse were at peak amplitude of 200 A for the whole 10 ms, its I2t would be 400 A2s. But if it's a half-cycle of sinewave, I2t would be only half as great: 200 A2s. Could be handled by an AWG26 wire or equivalent area of PCB track, if allowed to cool between shots.
For lightly damped oscillations, the action integral builds up with each cycle. It's simpler to just figure the temperature rise, assuming that the entire energy from capacitor goes into heating the coil. You can look up the specific heat and density of Cu. As an unreviewed example, consider a single-sided PCB 4 inches in diameter, with 1-ounce copper foil, and 5% of the area etched away to leave a spiral coil. It would have about 2.35 grams of Cu. A 100 Joule discharge would raise the temperature by a tolerable 110 degrees C, dropping rapidly as heat is conducted into the laminate.
Thickening your tracks with solder would help, mainly because of the extra thermal mass, which is all there on 10 ms timescale.
I was going to point out that solder, compared to copper isnt that conductive, so it would be more beneficial to add more copper, but good point about the thermal mass. I find desoldering braid works well for adding onto PCBs, find one of the right width and lay it down. Flat, to keep the PCB from getting too thick, and it doesnt fray and go everywhere like straded wire tends to do.
Registered Member #14
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:04PM
Location: Prato/italy
Posts: 383
I used PCB tracks for coilguns with no adverse effects, just make sure that the width is more than 6-7 millimeters and reinforce the tracks with lots of solder to avoid the voltage dropping too much causing artifacts. Also make sure that the inductance is low both for EMI interference and extra useless inductance. For capacitor tracks i used a zig-zag pattern.
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