Plasma speaker attempt

debe

Joined Sep 21, 2010
1,389
Heres a circuit i made 35Yrs ago for testing Horz O/P transformers, I still use it for testing Switchmode power suply transformers for shorted turns. Very simple but efective. The orange wire when joined represents 1 shorted turn, this causes the meter needle to drop.
 

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magnet18

Joined Dec 22, 2010
1,227
Thanks
I'm gonna give it a shot with another flyback I got, if it still dosen't work I might have to put one of those together, it'd be nice to have one :)
 

Thread Starter

magnet18

Joined Dec 22, 2010
1,227
Well, Thanks very much for all the help Debe... or Daryl
But due to lack of time I've decided to build the plasma speaker found here
http://teravolt.org/Plasma_Speaker_2.htm
I've got all the parts here and I'll be sure to post it up when I get it done! :D
probably next week (assuming I don't run into any problems :rolleyes:)

Out of curiosity, does anyone know if the quality of sound would be affected by the spacing of the gap contacts or what the best way to measure this efficiency (probably volume) would be?
 

Jimmeh30

Joined Mar 4, 2011
22
"If you go over 100 Hz you'll need a higher voltage to drive the ignition coil"
Sorry marshallf3 but an ignition coil on a v8 engine fires almost 300 times a second to 5K rpm, my experience is they find resonance somewhere between 4-8KHz although some will run much higher than that.

As for flybacks being dangerous, I'd wager (though I don't actually know this to be true) that a flyback puts out less current than an ignition coil can. I could be completely off there, never the less, flybacks are only as dangerous as an ignition coil with the added risk of RF burns at higher frequencies. This is not to say that they aren't dangerous of course!

I have just, as of 4 days ago, begun putting together a plasma speaker. After weeks of trying to find a "good circuit" on the net I bit the bullet (4 days ago) and began constructing a tl494 driver that I found on the net. it sorta worked. Drew MASSIVE current, fried the reverse protection diodes in the first 15 seconds and after several hours of trying to get it to run both silent and stable (frequency varied wildly whenever I got close to it) I gave up, pushed it up to 18V and smoked the transistors within 5 seconds.

Don't know what I'm gonna do with it now. I think perhaps the tl494 was a dud so I'll swap it out, rewind the primary to 12 turns instead of 6-ct-6 parallel the two drive transistors and see if it floats.

Nice forum by the way folks. I've spent hours on here in the past happily distracted from whatever I was searching for at the time. Keep up the good work :D
 
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