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re: Dan's DRSSTC II 1st light tips?

Original poster: Terry Fritz <teslalist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Marc,

Hi,

I am about 90% complete building Dan's DRSSTC II
DRSSTC II : "A Modern Day Solid State Tesla Coil Experiment" Book

I'm at the stage of final wiring.

All the mechanical stuff is done.. The coil, primary, strike rail, toroid,
PC boards, etc came out great. Inductances are within 5% of the book! The
gate driver puts out pulses. Except for making the base round instead of
square, I followed the book  pretty closely.

I WAS HOPING SOMEONE COULD GIVE ME SOME LAST MINUTE TIPS ON HOW TO DO THE
1ST POWER UP SO I DON'T KILL ANY OF THE FOLLOWING!


Mine is not like Dan's, but maybe some of these general things will help.

(1) - Myself

Be careful of the buss caps and primary wiring. Be sure they are discharged before touching anything in there!! Wear safety glasses 8-)

(2) - My expensive H-bridge IGBT's

I used batteries to bring up the buss the first time. They are low voltage and do not have enough current to blow the IGBTs. I could then check all the gate drives and everything. Then I hooked it to the primary and all so I could run it off the batteries (5 x 9V types). When everything looked good, I put a big 25 ohm resistor in series with the primary so I could run a pretty "easy" load. However, I think Dan's uses secondary current feedback instead of primary current feedback so that my not work...

When you first power the buss up, I check the voltage from both sides of the H-bridge to ground (system not running yet). It should not be very high. If it seems to be at a rail, something is wrong.

(3) - My computer, TV set.. etc 

Keep them, and wires going to them, away from the coil.

Other's that have direct info on Dan's coil will have far more specific info...

Cheers,

        Terry



thanks. Marc