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Ignition coil driver circuits and experiments


steven

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:) with these high voltage circuits i biuld as prototypes ,with the schematics ive collected, ive put them upstairs in the main bedroom right next to my side of the bed , and in the home made pvc circuit boxes i designed. ,2 of them circuits have a 12 volts rechargeble lead acid cell battery in them . now the ignition coil driver circuit i use to create hair thin arcs for skin exfoiliation etc is at the bottom of the high voltage units and ontop of that unit is another circuit with no battery in it , now what happend last night while haveing a shave , i decided to switch on that bottom hv circuit , to see if the 12 volts lead acid cell battery inside it is , still ok. and when i did that the led on the next high voltage unit ,on top lit up , when there was no battery in it. so this good bit of induction from an ignition coil driver circuit with coil able to induce that bit of voltage into the circuit on top to light that led with no conections made is intresting, and all my pvc circuit boxes are insulated with varnish to,

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Hi Ante,
Here is a high voltage limitation that we haven't discussed:
The spark coil's core is going to saturate with a particular amount of current through its primary, which is determined by the voltage that is applied to it. Then applying more voltage than that won't make any difference to the voltage of the spark.


True but won't a higher voltage cause the core to saturate more quickly thus causing a higher voltage?

Once I was using a 240V to 6V transformer in reverse to generate more than 5kV from 12V. I foolishly decided to discharge a 340V 1uf capacitor though the 6V coil, it didn't cause any damage the first time as the spark gap protected the secondary from arc over but the second time it left it open circuit and the transformer secondary became short circuit.

hotwaterwizard not that it makes any difference (unless you're powering this of a car cigarette lighter in acar) the +- terminals on the coil are the wrong way round. You could also make the circuit more efferent by using a power MOSFET.

also try different values for C try 220nf and 47nf.

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  • 2 months later...

I have quick question.  Can an Ignition Coil Driver make a good Capacitor Charger?  I'm currently working on a coil gun, and its working just fine for the exception of the charger; its just too damn slow!  I used a voltage multiplier as a charger; the capacitor bank is 900v @ 4500uf.

Any advice?  :)

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:)hey raptor2021 this needs more exsperimenting , now if you havent seen my posting in the high voltage stuff section, of the high voltage photo flash capacitor charger,. it uses a disc shaped flyback transformer , without the biult in high voltage trippler , now i tried an ignition coil before useing an ignition coil driver circuit , and the same parts i used  for the high voltage photo flash capacitor charger, but somehow it dident work with the ignition coil driven by the driver circuit , but if you look on the net there was a cheap coil gun that uses the photo flash capacitor charger from a camera and it had a few photo flash capacitors in parralell i think it was  and that looked ok , so it would be easyer to biuld the version i biult, that uses a flyback transformer driver circuit and use that to charge a few capacitors in parralell then use that.. the disc shaped flyback and ignition coil  both put out ac when driven by the driver circuits but i think it may of been the frenquency they were driven at  may be the unkown facter as to why the flyback can be used and not the ignition coil , so ill try something else next time and if it works ill let you know ,  it would be great to have a high voltage capacitor charger useing an ignition coil ,as the 2n3055 npn power tranny would last longer that the n channel mosfet i use, because there so static sensitive they get damaged easy , so ill try when i get around to it, and  this time ill use some of the parts  i use in the high voltage photo flash cap charger driver circuit this time and see how it goes then

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Guest Alun

I have quick question.  Can an Ignition Coil Driver make a good Capacitor Charger?  I'm currently working on a coil gun, and its working just fine for the exception of the charger; its just too damn slow!  I used a voltage multiplier as a charger; the capacitor bank is 900v @ 4500uf.

Any advice?  :)


The answer is yes you could but you'd need a diode on the output to prevent the capacitor from discharging back into the ignition coil, and you'd need another circuit to shut of the power when the capacitor voltage reaches 900V but it could be done.
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  • 3 months later...

i did try useing an ignition coil for a capacitor charger  and i used the same parts i used for the high voltage photo flash capacitor charger , thats the diodes and resisters and neon but it dident work so i think ill need a chain of diodes instead of just 2 like in the high voltage photoflash capacitor charger

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  • 1 month later...

:)ive may of allready mentioned this but when i switch on one of my portable ignition coil drivers with single ignition coil in it and allso 12 volts lead acid cell rechargeble battery  , the neon light on the high voltage photo flash capacitor charger allso comes on and that unit sits on top of the ignition coil driver circuit  i measured  1.45 volts  or more  at the outputs of the capacitor  charger when i switch on the ignition coil driver unit under it , so im getting some transmission of voltage here by the looks of it , or just induction  from one unlinked circuit to another , and even more strange dispite my usage of the high voltage photo flash cap charger i exspect  the 12 volts battery to be low by now but it seems to be still over 12 volts so why aint it getting low on power  ive used it a number of times . it should at least be getting low , now here is a picture of some of my high voltage units sitting on top of each other , makes you wonder if the operation of one is keeping the charge up on the other by induction, i will do some more exsperiments and see if i can double the induced voltage at the high voltage cap charger, when i switch the ignition coil unit on and see if maybe  i can recharge them all or keep them in charge by the induction from one high voltage circuit  alone

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:)ive made an error here im not getting 1.45 volts im getting 6.99 volts output from my switched of high voltage photo flash cap charger via the induction from the ignition coil driver when i switch that on , even though the neon dose have a voltage rateing of ,well in this case its  pritty high for a for a 6.99 volts output  to be lighting it , maybe i should  try see if i can get more higher voltage readings by touching my meter probes to the neon  serounds

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:)thankyou for the humour audio guru , i decided to measure the outputs of all the high voltage units that are all turned off and with just the ignition coil driver with coil on, and starting at the bottom one i got a small voltage reading from the induction  and as i measured the others and as i got closer to the ignition coil driver unit that is on the voltage reading climbed

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  • 4 weeks later...

:)the ignition coil driver dose have some good uses in exsperimenting with arcs and since ive come up with the simple capacitor charger in the other topic for chargeing capacitors up with by the use of the ignition coil with its ignition coil driver circuit  , here is a recreation of one of my parralell ignition coil setups , i just have to put in the negative return wire electrode, these really crank out some great arcs but even better i once used a single ignition coil and i charged a cap up and dumped it into the coil and got better arcs from it, you may be able or should be able to do the same with the parralell ignition coil set up. so ill biuld another high voltage photo flash cap charger and include the coils so just switch it on to charge up and select object or  pesty critter to be zapped then when ya charged the cap up just push a button  and dump that charged cap into the parralell coils and fry that critter , like in the case of pesky skunks , the parralell coils ive made 2 ignition coil holders from pvc pipes for them  so just run it off the simple ignition coil driver i even ran 3 coils in parralell of the same driver once

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:)audo guru i get big enougth arcs when i wire them in parralell but what do you mean by opisite phase  im not that familiar with that term yet. hey the voltage from the driver circuit to the coil is one thing you wait till i push a charged up cap through  it like i once did with my old modified camera flash unit i added to diodes and took out the photo flash cap and put in a 350 volts 47 uf electro and charged that up and with the push of a button i discharged that into it and that was one coil at the time and even though ive ran a parralell coil of the driver and even did 3 i will biuld another ignition coil driver cap charger and do it that way charge the cap up a higher voltage and value and throw that though it for bigger arcs if possible  so 2 copils in parralell would be intresting  i can top those coils up some more with oil if need be i have spare coil oil around so this would be intresting to try

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When you parallel the coils, connect one of them with its terminals opposite the way the other one is wired to make them opposite phase. Maybe car ignition coils don't have the polarity of their primary terminals marked, so you would need to try it then reverse the connections to one of the coils to see if it makes a higher voltage between them.

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  • 4 weeks later...

  with the help of an electronic prototype board and a peace of plastic from the lid of a cd cover i was able to make an electronic component leg spacer  drawing tool so that when i did the printed circuit drawing for the ignition coil driver i just used this plastic leg spacer gauge for drawing the components down  so that when i do the printed circuit onto the coper board all component legs are spaced apart  the right distance , so that when the boards done and i drill out the holes for the component legs and put in a component to solder, say a resister they fit perfectly , this idea eliminates the need to do ruler measurements just to get the holes the right distance apart for the component legs to fit through, ill upload the detailes for this handy peace of tool soon , now the capacitors on the ignition coil driver they are 0.1uf green caps  marked as 104 and after that is the letter j for %5  . there are different coloured green caps  marked as 104 and has the letter k , thats 10%, im not really sure but i think  the performance of the ignition coil driver with the 104 j caps are better than that with the caps marked as 104 k for 10%

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  • 2 months later...

here are some latest pictures , this is the parralell ignition coil setup i once rigged up. this time ive upgraded it and used 2 home made pvc ignition coil holders and the electrodes, well i use the 2 brass ones that i used once before for the same setup , now the high voltage return, well i was missing an electrode for that so i used a lenght of soft alliuminium alloy of some kind, i think they used it dureing powerline repairs of some kind , that peace was cut from a long coil of it , anyhow the first coil has one hv electrode thats bent towards the other hv electrode on the second coil now i used home made pvc electrode spacers to space the second hv electrode from the hv return ,  now when wired up to the ignition coil driver  these 2 coils together in parralell put out around say 50,000 volts  , now notice the lead pencill in one of the pictures , it was a pencil like that that i once held near the second hv electrode and an arc shot into it and punctured the wooden insulated end of the pencil and into my finger, the lead graphite itself acted like a resister i geuss but the clean holes it burnt into my skin with no pain gives me great ideas , for the use of high voltage arcs in exfoiliateing dead skin tissue and wart removal , and other things . now i did get a bit of black on my fingers where the holes got burnt but it just wipes off and leave clean holes . i once used another arc from another hv voltage circuit and beleave it or not  i was able to zapp a wart om my mates head, with it and it shrunk and  dried it out so good there was nothing but a tiny knob of dried skin left , if it had any mioster in it it got fried away in the process, and he dident feel it and its all healed now , if i pump hundreads of volts into the parralell coils here i would get arcs going all over so next i will make another setup which involves dismanteling 2 coils and modifying them and rerouting the inputs and returns , otherwide ill allso have arcs flying around the top insulated hv output to the neg return  well thats kind of what happend once  and i couldent beleave the arc to do that , but it did , makeing me think at first that the top high voltage insulated top section of the coil was breached , but it was suposed to fly from the hv out to neg but it was comeing from neg and going around the hv  part and going to the other input  it wasent doing what it was suposed to do ,  i cant exsplain long storey

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