This is it !

[gmeast]

controller

Ok, we've homed in on a solution for a practical multi-phase PWM controller that does not use a micro, but is as accurate as a micro-based multi-phase PWM (like the HEX Controller) and much easier to set up and adjust on the fly.

We'll post relevant info' as it emerges.

Thanks

[cikljamas]

my brothers

Greg,Farmhand,7imix i love you, you are my truly brothers !
Bob Boyce, we love you too, but i never heard that there is
some couple who never had an argue, that is something like
wind, or rain, something that clarifies and makes purer their
love, and after rain sun is shining brighter, is not that so Farmhand ?

Adult people should be aware of that, so if i crossed the line
it was not for sure with bad intentions at all, and i elaborated that
in details...

And now, go back to work...As Tesla said nothing is so exciting as
when inventor see how its device is starting to work...That is our
excitement, that is our goal, that is the reason for our joy...

We spilled too many words last days, but not one single word
was spilled for any other reason but because our desire to see
our stuff to works !

God bless you all including me and specially Bob Boyce !

Listen the words of this song :
YouTube - Tom Jones-Without Love

[Farmhand]

Yes you are correct Cikljamas, sometime's when the clouds lift
the sun is so illuminating it can be painfull to the eye's to see.

I'm not surprised to see that a little adversity brings us to a closer
understanding. If anything the surprising events have merely caused
us to attend to the maintainance of our ships hull. It appears the faults
in our glorious ship of discovery were very minor.
And quickly attended to.

And we learned a few things too. Like Roy is a terrible shot.
and whenever you go shark fishing a bigger boat is always better.

Also NSA can stand for a lot of different things.
eg. Noncompliant Serial Anarchists.

OK ok I'll stop now.

YouTube - Mamas & The Papas "California Dreamin"

Cheers

[faramog]

Hey greg, I haven't done much logic ic work before, but I am a programmer so I am familiar with binary logic. I only just now looked up flip flops in my electronics book, so forgive me if I'm doing something stupid, but I tested this in the simulator and it seems to have the output you desire.

Dont forget to ground-bounce the switches or the flip-flop may end up doing lots of 'interesting' things.

Not gone through the logic so no comment, but you cannot just switch into either TTL or (especially) cmos from a 5V power source without precautions. All mechanical switchs are not exactly binary... there is a 'judder' of multiple short contacts leading to full contact.

[cikljamas]

You know Farmhand i ve been thinking about what had happened
with Bob Boyce could be something like that :
YouTube - The Mission - Gabriel's Oboe

Maybe his music was just too strange for me, and i just
broke his oboe...

But if so, Bob should have understood that, and helped us though !

Ok, i will stop now too !

Cheers !

[7imix]

Dont forget to ground-bounce the switches or the flip-flop may end up doing lots of 'interesting' things.

Not gone through the logic so no comment, but you cannot just switch into either TTL or (especially) cmos from a 5V power source without precautions. All mechanical switchs are not exactly binary... there is a 'judder' of multiple short contacts leading to full contact.

Thanks for the input. The mechanical switches in the diagram are just symbolic representations of different inputs from another part of the circuit and won't actually be mechanical switches in the final circuit.

I was just reading about switch debouncing last night so interesting that you bring it up

[Farmhand]

Thanks for the input. The mechanical switches in the diagram are just symbolic representations of different inputs from another part of the circuit and won't actually be mechanical switches in the final circuit.

I was just reading about switch debouncing last night so interesting that you bring it up

I think I might have read somewhere that all unused pins on a logic chip should be grounded.

Not sure what that applies to. Almost certain I read it somewhere though.

[gmeast]

input

Dont forget to ground-bounce the switches or the flip-flop may end up doing lots of 'interesting' things.

Not gone through the logic so no comment, but you cannot just switch into either TTL or (especially) cmos from a 5V power source without precautions. All mechanical switchs are not exactly binary... there is a 'judder' of multiple short contacts leading to full contact.

Hi faramog,

Thanks too for your input. I would appreciate maybe a little more. The inputs to this logic circuit are coming from a 74LS Flip Flop device on 5VDC. The output swing is 4.5VDC to 0.6VDC. Debounce is not likely an issue here.

The output of the logic circuit will optically couple to a FET gate driving circuit.

See any problems? Thanks in advance.

[Bob Boyce]

Hi faramog,

Thanks too for your input. I would appreciate maybe a little more. The inputs to this logic circuit are coming from a 74LS Flip Flop device on 5VDC. The output swing is 4.5VDC to 0.6VDC. Debounce is not likely an issue here.

The output of the logic circuit will optically couple to a FET gate driving circuit.

See any problems? Thanks in advance.

Please do not use an optocoupler. They cannot switch cleanly or quickly enough. Because normal optocouplers are so horrible above 5 Khz, I used optically coupled digital signal processors on my PWM3F. While they worked, even they were very marginal at 40+ Khz. I had to test and hand-pick to find those that would work good enough at 42.8 Khz. As pulse width narrows, common optical devices get worst in response.

Ooops, I forgot to not post this here

Bob Boyce

[gmeast]

no opto

Please do not use an optocoupler. They cannot switch cleanly or quickly enough. Because normal optocouplers are so horrible above 5 Khz, I used optically coupled digital signal processors on my PWM3F. While they worked, even they were very marginal at 40+ Khz. I had to test and hand-pick to find those that would work good enough at 42.8 Khz. As pulse width narrows, common optical devices get worst in response.

Ooops, I forgot to not post this here

Bob Boyce

Thanks Bob ... you're very cool indeed. Ok ... I'll have to study up on what a 'optically coupled digital signal processor' is. Is the OCP-PCP116-TR one of them thar things?

Thanks again ... naughty, naughty.

[gmeast]

toroid waxing photo essay

Hi all,

Okay ... here I go with the wax. I don't have a heat gun so I went a slightly different route.

I preheated the core/secondary to about 140degF. I couldn't effectively embed a TC so I only have an estimate on core/wire temp. The pictures show the toroid sitting on 3 up-turned soup cans being heated by convective heat rising from the hot frying pan it's all sitting in/on. The TC is just sandwiched between the toroid/wire and a soup can bottom so good contact with the toroid/wire is NOT guaranteed. Then I melted some bee's wax and flowed it in between the turns, a small section at a time. I only melted enough bee's wax at any given time for 2 or 3 sections for safety reasons. Because the wax has more contact area with the Teflon and air than it does with the slightly cooler core, the wax stays fluid, and then very workable for a surprising length of time (45 seconds or more) before it freezes. You can even do a bit of last minute wire straightening if you want. A knife warmed with the stove flame used to smooth things works great.

ALERT:
IF YOU DON'T HAVE EXPERIENCE WITH MELTED BEE'S WAX DON'T DO WHAT I'M DOING. I'M A FORMER TOOL MAKER AND KNOW THE DANGERS. IF YOU DO WANT TO HEAT IT, USE A DOUBLE BOILER AND AN ELECTRIC HOT PLATE AWAY FROM FLAME, PEOPLE, PETS AND THINGS YOU CARE ABOUT.

I did the faces first and then moved to the periphery. I'm not done with the periphery as of this post. But the periphery is being done just as I did the faces ... one short section at a time.

Photo Essay:
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...rm_toroid0.JPG
TC coming in from right foreground
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...mp_toroid0.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...mp_toroid1.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...d/melt_wax.JPG
Everything will be topped off, shaved down or smoothed down later. I would assume it's most important at this stage to get the wax in intimate contact with the core and adjacent turns. I'll make pretty and flat prior to taping.
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...d/flow_wax.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian.../smooth_it.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...oid/side_1.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...oid/side_2.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...periphery1.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...periphery2.JPG
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...periphery3.JPG

The Gorilla Tape girdles can come off and I can do the edges last now that the turns will be fully secured ... I'll likely completely finish the corner waxing filling, shaving and smoothing at the wire terminations FIRST so I can tape those things up so they're fully secured from loosening.

The over sized insulation on this wire has made straightening, winding and waxing very difficult. Don't know who to thank for that?

Well, there ya go.

[7imix]

Please do not use an optocoupler. They cannot switch cleanly or quickly enough. Because normal optocouplers are so horrible above 5 Khz, I used optically coupled digital signal processors on my PWM3F. While they worked, even they were very marginal at 40+ Khz. I had to test and hand-pick to find those that would work good enough at 42.8 Khz. As pulse width narrows, common optical devices get worst in response.

Ooops, I forgot to not post this here

Bob Boyce

Thanks a lot for your advice, I really appreciate it!

[7imix]

Ok, so, coupling the driver with the coil. This is obviously a tricky subject. My experiments with optocouplers were not promising -- they could not switch fast enough. I have been thinking of other methods of getting sharp pulses... Don smith basically used solid state spark gap equivalents, like a sidac or a varistor. So he would charge a high voltage cap with just normal high voltage ac and then once the breakdown voltage of the "gap" is reached the cap discharges into the coil.

I'm going to be building a circuit like this one anyway to increase my understanding and ability to build solid state tesla coils. However the hard part with this circuit might be the timing, especially since we want the pulses to go to different coils at different times. So this may make this impulser design not suitable for the toroid.

[gmeast]

we don't really need that

Ok, so, coupling the driver with the coil. This is obviously a tricky subject. My experiments with optocouplers were not promising -- they could not switch fast enough. I have been thinking of other methods of getting sharp pulses... Don smith basically used solid state spark gap equivalents, like a sidac or a varistor. So he would charge a high voltage cap with just normal high voltage ac and then once the breakdown voltage of the "gap" is reached the cap discharges into the coil.

I'm going to be building a circuit like this one anyway to increase my understanding and ability to build solid state tesla coils. However the hard part with this circuit might be the timing, especially since we want the pulses to go to different coils at different times. So this may make this impulser design not suitable for the toroid.

Hi 7imix,

I was operating my Op-Amp PMW circuit at 80kHz and 'on' times of less than 2usec. I don't know why it's not possible to fire the FETs from an amplified signal from the gate circuit. What we are doing (specifically) is not replicating a Don Smith thing. Bob already did it with standard components, albeit hand picked and tested. It's just a real slow down to try and invent something new to drive the FETs or even replace the FETs.

Here's my Op-Amp PWM at almost 48KHz and 2usec PW. That PW is at the root of the pulse ... the 'on' time at the peak is about 1.85usec. The 'rise' time and 'fall' time may not quite be there yet, but this circuit isn't even a 'real' PWM ... and it looks crisper on an analog scope. Digital scopes don't do HF justice anyway. So I think we're closer than we think .... Bob?
http://02d1852.netsolhost.com/radian...Hz x 2usec.png

My two cents worth ...

Later

[Farmhand]

My Method of Waxing

Hi all, thought i would share my waxing on follies too. I used a different method than Greg, hopefully I can cause some much needed controversy. We could do with some of that controversy stuff. It's hard to get enough.

Just kidding. I just warmed my core up in the sun, I couldn't find an adult so I wasn't allowed to use the stove. After I warmed the core and some wax, I just worked the wax into pieces that slotted into the gaps and I worked the soft wax into the gaps like that. Then I will trim it back just like Greg said to do.

One pic shows the way I filled the gaps and the next one shows a small almost finished area.

http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/...003.JPG?psid=1

http://public.bay.livefilestore.com/...003.JPG?psid=1

I like the way you did it Greg much less labor intensive than my way, quicker too by the looks. Oh well I needed some finger tip exercises. Strengthen the finger tips for more effective Three Stooges forked two finger eye pokes to the bad guys.

And nobody steal my finger print images either. If you do i'll have to start using the other one's. Hahaha I only have a couple of set's of fingers left.

Cheers