S.s. MOSFET-driving

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Kchdlh-at-aol-dot-com>

There's been mention made recently of the IR2110-series ICs for driving
Tesla-coil MOSFETs.  A long while back I had intractable trouble using those
ICs, seemingly because the very high-impedance voltage-translating circuitry
within the IC was being affected by the coil's electric field.  I had to get
rid of the IC-drive scheme and go to discrete-component drivers + isolating
transformers.  For the latter, I just use readily-available common-mode chokes
(2 windings on a toroid) connected as 1:1 transformers.

And as to the transformer-drive...I additionally found a problem in that, every
time drive was cut off at the termination of a spark-event, the transformer's
flux would have to reset to 0 and that would cause the MOSFETs to turn on
spuriously.  I had to add additional circuitry to eliminate that turn-on.

Ken Herrick