Re: SSTC battle continues!

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

Original poster: "Dr. Resonance" <resonance-at-jvlnet-dot-com> 


We are presently up to 290 cm ( 9.5 ft. ) on 5.5 kVA SSTC.  There was a
national press release on our "Tesla rifle" through the Associated Press a
few weeks ago.  We are working with Pete Bitar's Extreme Alternate Defense
Systems on this project.  With solid state technology it's easy to break the
old rule for classic TCs of 1 kVA input per foot of spark output.

Our second project is a Kinetic Resonance Energy Weapon (KREW for short)
that hopefully will be ready for a demo at our Open House on Sept. 4th.

Dr. Resonance

Resonance Research Corporation
E11870 Shadylane Rd.
Baraboo   WI   53913
 >
 > Yes, it can be a battle just getting a SSTC to work and stay working for
 > more than 10 seconds. All those problems multiply as the coil gets bigger
 > and more powerful.
 >
 > But knowledge of practical EE matters like layout, shielding and grounding
 > can help you a lot. These are far more important than they were in
spark-gap
 > coiling- it takes a lot less interference to destabilise a self-resonant
 > controller than to burn out an NST :(
 >
 > In practice, it's probably a good idea to build your SSTC controller, and
 > plan the wires that connect it to power supplies, H-bridge, ground etc,
with
 > the same attention to shielding and grounding as a computer CPU box or a
 > high-sensitivity radio receiver. Radio techniques are quite appropriate,
as
 > the idea in a driver is to let the power supply and feedback signal into
the
 > box, and let the gate drive out, while keeping all other
conducted/radiated
 > interference out.
 >
 > Possibly the worst offender is ground loops that include your SSTC driver
 > circuit board. These can pick up magnetic field from the primary/secondary
 > coils as well as the large dI/dt caused by an arc to ground.
 >
 > Another bad source of interference is the dV/dt caused by an arc to
ground-
 > as the toroid capacitance is suddenly discharged to ground, it pulls the
 > local RF ground up to a remarkably high voltage. This effect is discussed
in
 > textbooks on commercial lightning protection. It can cause electrostatic
 > coupling of hash into your control circuits, and even cause the RF
"ground"
 > to arc over to your control circuits which are hooked to a different (AC
 > line) ground.
 >
 >
 > Steve C.
 >
 > best SSTC spark so far: 185cm
 >
 > Death toll: 9 small IGBTs, 2 fast recovery diodes, 4 MOSFETs, 6 UCC3732x
 > driver chips, a pile of 555/74HCxx/LM339/2N3904/etc, a heap of fuses, and
 > one 240V 40W filament bulb burnt out by ground strike current.
 >
 >
 >