New Jewel Thief "Resonate LCR Circuit" Much less energy draw....

[Pirate88179]

Jeanna:

Thanks for the suggestion.  Main problem is, I can only run it for a few seconds as the transistor gets too hot to even touch.  I believe I fried the first one so I replaced it and...it gets really hot really fast too.  I had no problems like this with my first large toroid wind.  I can run that one for hours and the transistor remains cool.

I know I screwed up something along the way, I just have to figure out what.

Bill

[resonanceman]

Jadaro:

I would think it might.  That is why I use the 28 ga. Newbie Wire from Gobrushless.  It has a much thicker coating (insulation) than regular magnet wire.  The dielectric strength of the coating still might not be good enough for real high voltage applications. But I have not tried to wind a trigger coil yet.

Even with my extra precautions I have a short somewhere on my latest large toroid wind and it is going to be a real pain to locate.

Bill

Bill

Do  you have any shellac  laying around?

SHellac   is a very good insulator ........ It was used  on motors for years

Thery wound the rotors then dipped then in shellac   just to make  sure the insulation  was intact

If  you  give  your toroid a nice paint  job with shellac it might  seal the  short .... If  it  does not ...... shellac is not that strong...... you can still pull the wire off
It may take  a little scraping  to  get the shellac off the toroid.......but  I think  it is  a good risk

gary

[jadaro2600]

Jadaro:

I would think it might.  That is why I use the 28 ga. Newbie Wire from Gobrushless.  It has a much thicker coating (insulation) than regular magnet wire.  The dielectric strength of the coating still might not be good enough for real high voltage applications. But I have not tried to wind a trigger coil yet.

Even with my extra precautions I have a short somewhere on my latest large toroid wind and it is going to be a real pain to locate.

Bill

I think the trigger coils may have been done as suggested above ( with shellac ) or some other extra insulation.  It would be nice to see the results of a magnetic insulator?

Also, since you have a toroid wound / winding, you can take the entire toroid and connect one terminal on the suspect wire to one terminal on an ohmmeter and the other you can do this with:

Drop your toroid in distilled water, the ohmic resistance should change the closer you get to the break in the wire.  Do not add electrolytes.  Alcohol could be another solution you could try, if the water is too conductive.

Your toroid may be shorted to the wire, check ohmic resistance between toroid and the wire ends.  If this is so, then you can repeat the operation above and note the fact, you may have to take this into account.

Also, do not try to push high voltage through and look for a glow on the cable, it's likely to cause more breaks in the insulation as well as make whatever breaks you have bigger.

There may be more than one break already.

About your transistor overheating:  Try increasing resistance to base?, or you could bias the transistor with a diode. Or reduce number of coils on the inductor-to-base.  Only problem I've ever had with an overheating transistor is too much current-always on transistor.

[sirmikey1]

Using 5v input, the disposable camera transformer gives me 550v rectified.  The 4kv trigger coil is nothing spectacular either, about half.  Slayer says that the 10kv trigger coil puts out well over 1000volts, using 2 AA batteries.  1kv seems to be the minimal mandatory target.  Well, just wanted to say...
Mikey

[jadaro2600]

Ultimately the winding ratio is what dictates the voltage out vs voltage in.