Extreme High Voltage: TinselKoil IX Improvements: Caps, Interrupter
I added a bypass capacitor and a small matching capacitor to the Driver board, and this allows cleaner resonance and arcing. Distance is improved and stability is better.
I also built up an interrupter circuit using a 555 timer to produce an adjustable square wave signal that goes to the PLL chip’s Disable pin. When this pin is pulled LOW by the 555’s output pulse the PLL chip is enabled and actuates the mosfet through the driver board.
I changed to an IRF830 mosfet, with a 1 Megohm resistor from Gate to Source. It’s holding up well but does get hot, so I added the small cooling fan and made sure that the mosfet had a good heatsink. Eventually I’ll put a real power mosfet in there like IRFP260n or similar.
Audio modulation is only a small step away, just need to add a capacitor and a phono jack for the input.
