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Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
wrote ...
I know it may be a bit pricey and I can do it myself etc, but being my first coil it looks rather nice. And something I could show off without stuff breaking.
Pricey? You got to be out of your mind. Thats a steal for that price - considering the amount of time the guy spent designing the thing, maching the parts, buying materials, and assembly the package, writing instructions, etc . . .
Registered Member #95
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 04:57PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 1308
I was going to mention that too. Hell, I sold a complete 555 flyback driver kit for 85USD to some guy! No, I wasn't ripping him off as that was actually as cheap as I could afford. There's tons of work involved in hand-crafted objects, something that's easy to forget when most things we buy roll off an assembly line.
Registered Member #1361
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 10:57AM
Location: Cairns, Australia
Posts: 305
Heh well, the exchange rate wasnt exactly on my side, but it isn't too bad if I was living in the US. I can see the amount of work that has been put into it, thus why I bought it, it's purty
Well, if the power board is inside the coil, depending on how it works I may be able to just replace the transformer, and maybe somehow half the 240V. I'm gonna try as hard as I can to find a way to avoid using that stupid stepdown transformer. Although, if it only draws 40W from the mains, even a tiny stepdown transformer may work, they go for about $50 here and arent too heavy.
I just emailed the seller thru eBay, and requested some larger pics if he had any and also asked about the power supply, I'll get back to you with the response :)
He seems to have sold a heck of a lot of these, I'm surprised no one here has one!
Random question: If someone else was to have one of these, and his primary was wired to produce positive sparks, and mine was wired to produce negative sparks, and the 2 coils were plugged into the same outlet, would the 2 coils spark to each other? Would this damage anything?
Registered Member #15
Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068
lpfthings wrote ...
Heh well, the exchange rate wasnt exactly on my side, but it isn't too bad if I was living in the US. I can see the amount of work that has been put into it, thus why I bought it, it's purty
Well, if the power board is inside the coil, depending on how it works I may be able to just replace the transformer, and maybe somehow half the 240V. I'm gonna try as hard as I can to find a way to avoid using that stupid stepdown transformer. Although, if it only draws 40W from the mains, even a tiny stepdown transformer may work, they go for about $50 here and arent too heavy.
I just emailed the seller thru eBay, and requested some larger pics if he had any and also asked about the power supply, I'll get back to you with the response :)
He seems to have sold a heck of a lot of these, I'm surprised no one here has one!
Random question: If someone else was to have one of these, and his primary was wired to produce positive sparks, and mine was wired to produce negative sparks, and the 2 coils were plugged into the same outlet, would the 2 coils spark to each other? Would this damage anything?
Sorry, no such thing as positive and negative sparks. Each arc swings postive and negative.
The coils don't have to be synchronized or out of phase with each other. They will tend to strike each other anyways. Steve Ward had some nice twin DRSSTCs at one time.
Registered Member #1361
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 10:57AM
Location: Cairns, Australia
Posts: 305
Heheh, I've seen them on youtube, very nice coils!
I was kind of hoping I could use a SLA to power it, but I guess I'll have to wait for the seller to respond with how it's powered. I can't seem to find the power input in the pics, does anyone know where it is?
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
I agree with EVR, it's a sweet deal, considering you get all those nicely machined acrylic parts and a real spun topload!
I've seen mini DRSSTCs that run off a wall wart, using a step-up SMPS to power the DC bus at 300-400V, so it can be done! The sparks can still be big and nasty, because the DC bus capacitor stores lots of energy, just like a photoflash. Only the breakrate is limited by the available power. I watched the videos, and I think it's quite possible the coil is made this way.
So, it should run fine off a SLA, but you'll still need a RF ground! Otherwise the bottom of the coil will reach a high RF voltage, and you're in for a surprise when you reach for the switch... When used with the wall wart, the RF current probably goes to live and neutral through the wart's EMI filter capacitors.
Registered Member #1361
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 10:57AM
Location: Cairns, Australia
Posts: 305
Thanks for the heads up Steve
Just got an email from the seller:
"The coil runs on 12VAC. I include a 120VAC/12VAC wall adapeter to power the coil with in the kit. If you want to run the coil with a 12V LA battery then you will need an inverter to convert the 12VDC to 12VAC"
Well, that makes me happy then! No bulky stepdown transformers! Woohoo!
So I guess all I need to do is figure out how to convert 12VDC into 12VAC. The seller has offered to build this inverter for me for $30, however I'd prefer to not have to wait any longer to receive this thing.
I was assuming it used nice large capacitors if it was running from 12V.
EDIT: Screw it, I'll just buy the power supply from him.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Hey Dan
That's interesting, I guess he's used a little 240V:12V transformer inside the unit, turned backwards to step the 12V back up to a high voltage.
You can build a simple inverter using the Mazzilli/ZVS circuit. You leave out the choke and resonant capacitor, and connect it up to an ordinary iron-cored transformer. The oscillation frequency is controlled by transformer saturation. It's pretty ghetto, but it's worked for me in the past!
I used a 12.6V CT to 240V transformer, you might have better luck with a toroidal transformer that has two 120V primaries and two 9V secondaries.
Edit, damn, I noticed you need 12V AC, not 120, forget it.
Registered Member #1361
Joined: Thu Feb 28 2008, 10:57AM
Location: Cairns, Australia
Posts: 305
Why does it need to be high voltage, wouldn't 12V but at a high current do pretty much the same thing as high voltage at a lower current, or am I missing something? (Or everything )
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Anyone own one of these?
)