Extreme High Voltage: TinselKoil IX PLL Exciter First Light

First light from the TinselKoil IX Phase-Locked Loop Exciter, or Solid State Tesla Coil.

I made a mosfet driver board using an inverting circuit with 2n7000 and 2n2222a transistors to drive the Gate of the power mosfet.

To interface between the PLL circuit and the inverting driver, I made another inverting stage with a 4049 chip.

The circuit works fairly well, locks to resonance at around 735 kHz more or less, and with 24 volts to the mosfet – primary coil circuit, produces a nice HV output, drawing a 3/4 inch arc and making a sputtering corona to the hand-held NE-2 neon or to a grounded piece of metal.

Still needs more tuning, and a different mosfet, before pushing higher powers through it. I think I need a better feedback pickup system than the simple closed loop at the base that I am using now.

Presently am using a 2sk3265 mosfet, but I’ve tried IRF830 and IRF3205 which also work well. Eventually it will be getting an IRFP260 or similar mosfet and higher input voltages.

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