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!!! Sam Barros' 5000WATTS High-Energy Double Car Ignition Coil Driver!!!
Yep, I am back with news on my so-called " Coils Of Destruction",
and, after last night’s testing, they have really earned their name!
First of all, I have decided to set the limit power input to 5kW.
There are several reasons for it, but mainly it is the fact that most
Dutch Houses use 16A fuses, and those can only barely stand 20A input
for few minutes before blowing (and this only if there is no other
significant load connected to it). Than is the fact that above 5kW it
starts getting pretty expensive to run the device. Thick wires are
required, etc… Plus, 5kW is POLE PIG power!!!
Finally, I have learned the hard way that the coils will only
*barely* take all that power. Read on, and enjoy the ride!
This Sunday I re-started my Ignition Coil driver research. I had it
stopped for the last 2 weeks after several parts burned out during my
1st attempt to run 5kW. It created an arc that started with the wires
15cm far for 4 seconds and after that it never worked again..
I was working in Reinier’s House. We took out the driver he had built
a few months ago using my design and schematics and started doing some
experiments. The driver was limited by a MOT with a shorted-out
secondary. The power input of the mot was measured at 250V, 20A, and
the output was 1.98A 2500V. The MOT would, therefore take in a full
5kW when shorted (obviously at that power it was not long before the
input wires, and the primary winding became very hot. In fact, a
30Second run would be enough to cause the insulation to start burning
off the wires.
The first thing we noticed when we plugged it in and flipped the
switch was that the MOT was indeed pulling in 20A, even though it was
in series with the driver (we had the power input carefully monitored
at all times, because I wanted to be sure of it before posting it
here. If, after reading this mail you still don’t believe me about the
power of this device, I suggest you try it out by yourself). The
switch made loud popping noises when we flipped it and sometimes it
welded a bit, so high was the amperage.
The input wires got hot and the diode died . We replaced it with two
larger diodes. Tried again: After a few seconds both the SCR and the
diodes were very hot, as was the MOT primary winding. The coils were
starting to get hot and several large segments of the board exploded
in a flash (the copper strips were vaporised)!!! I than remembered
seeing an old television board. It was built with a very interesting
trick: I want to share it with you, for I think it is very useful:
Normal circuit boards do not have enough copper to stand 20A. They
become very hot and the copper blows off. This is further worsened by
the fact that the boar we are using is a general-purpose board, with
one hole every mm. Now, the trick is to run the soldering iron over
the board and make a nice, thick, smooth solder layer that covers up
all holes and multiplies the effective thickness of the board by a
factor of 4 or more. I did this to all connections in the board and
this solved our problem once and for all.
We tried again. The coils were running so much power it was hard to
believe. Standing near them was frightening! They were humming VERY
loudly (several times louder than the shorted MOT) and they vibrated
so much that they hopped up and down a few mm on the table. The stiff
HV wires sticking out of them were swinging from side to side and the
vibrations were clearly felt on the entire table. Objects moved,
things shook, it was amazing. Despite the fact that those coils are
magnetically shielded by an steel outer core and a steel can, they
were picking up metal bolts and nuts and moving them around! The metal
can is completely insulated from the coils, and yet I could draw
sparks almost 1cm long off it!
One of the coils suffered insulation breakdown in the HV terminal
insulation. The arc punched trough a thin plastic pipe and the ceramic
insulation itself. We put a thick PVC pipe over it and filled up the
pipe with Polyester resin (a 2-part resin that you mix and pour in
like an epoxy). The resin is meant to dry in 20 minutes, but since
Reinier put way too much hardener, it heated up to a very high
temperature within minutes, started boiling and smoking, and burned
out. The end result was a room filled with a cloud of toxic smoke and
a coil with carbonised insulation. We decided to use one of my coils
than.
We tried again. Flipped the switch, same result. Very loud humming,
shaking and the diodes and SCR were becoming dangerously hot, despite
heatsinks (burned my finger on the SCR heatsink twice).
One thing we quickly noticed was that the entire HV output of one of
the coils was covered with purple corona. It made a loud sizzling
noise as most of the energy got wasted there. We decided to keep using
it for now, but that coil was effectively shorted. Maximum spark
length therefore was more than halved. The HV output got pretty hot too…
After taking all my measurements, and reaching the conclusions I was
hoping for, I tried out a simple experiment. I attached a 2-inch long
piece of solder to the output of one of the coils. The solder was 1mm
diameter ordinary 60/40 resin cored solder. When I switched on the
coil, a bright arc (orange/purple) shot from that terminal to the
other coil’s HV terminal, and it consumed the solder at a rate of
almost 1 inch per second!!!
That was unbelievable. The arc was in fact hotter than a NST arc! I
would compare it to the arc you get off a un shunted MOT, except the
arcs off this device can start as far as 8”away.
The HV connections became very hot after that.
Examining the output:
The arc seems to be quite high in frequency. Still well into the
audible range. No way to tell how high but I suspect it is near the
kHz range. I could be wrong. The arc is very stable and can be drawn.
It is also incredibly hot and will rise, forming an inverted " V "
shape.
The arc produces a lot of noise. More than a MOT arc, and this noise,
combined with the noise of the humming coils makes for a fairly loud
device, but not painfully loud.
After two 30 second runs, the MOT started smoking, the SCR and the
heatsink were hot enough to vaporise water (as was the MOT), the
diodes burned my finger, the insulation on the thin wire we used was
softening and the Coils were INCREDIBLY HOT! I was afraid they might
explode violently, as they have strong steel cases filled with oil.
Eventually, one of the coils died (or at least we think it died,
because the device started shaking and didn’t produce any output.
Secondary meltdown perhaps? I’ll find out!).
So, this is it. I should say the driver is progressing very well.
After today’s testing I have a lot to do. More insulation is in great
demand, and my oil-filled PVC pipe is almost completed. The output
sprays so much you can see the air on a 10cm radius glow blue. We used
20AWG 40KVDC double-layer wire, but I could draw 2-inch long sparks
from the insulation. It is useless. I am now going to epoxy a 20cm
long PVC pipe to the coils, run a thick wire trough the middle, with
thick silicon tubing around it and fill the pipe up with insulating
oil. I also plan on putting a small toroid on the top, to look cool
and suppress corona.
I am going trough major redesigning again. I am making a new unit
with both solder and wire reinforcements on the board and I am now
using 80uF of capacitance. I am expecting 8" (20cm) arcs from the
completed design, at the very least. The results should be available
by the end of the week. Any questions will be answered by me either
trough private mail or through the list.
Meanwhile, here are the specs:
Type of device: high-frequency pulsed capacitive discharge coil driver.
Power input: 5000Watts, 250V.
Power output: Unknown. Arcs start at 15Cm (working my way up to 20CM
and beyond, note that it can be reduced to less than 10kV for powering
a Tesla Coil) and are bright orange, hot enough to melt copper wires.
Max arc length to date: 15CM (100000Volts)
Cap size: 50UF filter, 20uF main (increasing)
The device is small and cost me some 50 dollars total to build, with
box, circuit board and all other accessories. Coils excluded. Note
that the coils only take the power because they are oil cooled. I took
one apart and found out this about it:
The Ignition Coils I am using are built very much like a Mini
Pole-Pig. They are severely overdesigned and made to work 24 hours a
day, for many years inside a car engine, where temperatures can easily
exceed 100C and the coil can be required to pulse as much as 200PPS
and beyond.
The secondary is wound around a thick coilform, with several layers,
each one insulated with a plastic sheet.
The Primary is wound outside the secondary, with a gap between the 2.
2 and a half layers, 0.50mm thick wire (note that my MOT uses 1mm
thick wire and can stand 5kW. It is therefore logic that 2 coils wound
with 0.5mm wire will take 5kW). The can is filled with good insulating
oil, which soaks up everything. The coil is rated for 48kV, and the
insulation will easily stand 100kV+ (tested it).
Removing the core you are left with a helical primary Tesla Coil. The
system works in the very same way a TC would and I expect similar
performance. This will be my next step after I have the driver finished.
More info:
1:100 turns ratio,
200Turns primary, 0.50mm dia wire,
20000Truns secondary, 0.02MM dia wire
Some 150 ml of oil for insulation, steel inner and outer core. Inter
turn insulation as well as core and case insulation. Pretty well built!
Ignition coil diagrams and autopsy results (wire diameter, insulation
type and thickness, drawings, ect, available by email.
NOTE: This is NOT a transformer. Applying 220V AC will do NOTHING to
it, and applying as much as 2500V AC will also yield no output. It is
an INDUCTOR, in which voltage builds up on the secondary upon removal
of primary voltage.
It can be used to charge large HV capacitors several cycles per
second, and this means that it will be perfectly suitable to power a
fairly large TC (with some pretty short run times, but much more
insulation reliability than anything but a Pole Pig)
See you soon,
Sam Barros.
==
Sam Barros,
sambarros-at-yahoo-dot-com
ICQ#:15156975
"The Less You Know, The Better You Sleep"...
"Evolution Stops When Stupidity Is No Longer Fatal"
"If At First You Don't Suceed, Increase The Amperage"
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