Hi Gary, Focusing on photocell:What type of photocell are you using? Is it one of those 1/2" circular photocells (zigzag line things)? I used something a bit different but cheap. Think I got it at Jameco years ago, but this is what I used along with the box and description mentioned previously.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bart-coils/4872360015/One thing I did have to do was to cover most of the area with black tape to remove ambient light as well as force only a portion of the cells to react through the hole within the box that the 500W halogens were inside. I believe I also had to use minor lens filter (most anything will do) between cell and the light coming out of the hole.
I'd be more than happy to send this to you if you like (no charge and don't even want it back). Just send address my way if you want to give it a try.
Best regards, Bart Gary Lau wrote:
OK, back from vacation, time to start the experiments! Igor??? I tried monitoring the lamp brightness using a photocell. Previously I just applied Variac'ed AC to the bulbs to test the photocell response. Today I hooked up the actual spark gap and capacitor to an NST. Just as I feared, the chaotic gap behavior resulted in extremely erratic resistance readings. Useless. I tried placing a big cap across the photocell terminals, but that didn't work. Back to monitoring the bulb temperature with a thermocouple.
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