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This is the 556 Staccato Driver Board, made directly off of the copper and silkscreen layouts seen above. On the left side of the board, an LM317 based pwr. supply. Then the 556 controller, then bipolar transistor amplifier stage, then a DC decoupling capacitor (OK ok, so it's an electrolytic!), then finally the two gate drive/isolation transformers. Very simple, very cheap, and gets the job done.
| Half-Wave Rect. Input | Full-Wave rect. Input | Filtered DC input |
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We got our SSTC's working good, both Aron and I are getting 14" arcs with 240V input. He has a coil and I have a coil, they are both identical circuit-wise, but have totally different construction techniques. Aron's driver is on a breadboard, mine is on a nice circuit board. Aron's H-bridge is gorgeous on a board, mine is slapped together on a heatsink. But both coils perform nearly the same, haha.
We're using Richie Burnett's H-bridge design found at www.richieburnett.co.uk because we LIKE IT. It is a good circuit. Very good. It comes highly recommended from Hvguy.com
For the driver, we recently finished the design and testing of our own new circuit that incorporates the "staccato" business into the deal, in order to experiment with RF envelope risetime vs. sparklength. So far, staccato hasn't helped sparklength much, but then again, we just got the thing working.
Our new circuit is based on nothing more than a single NE556 IC, and works REALLY good. We can vary the staccato frequency from hours, to 5Hz (POP POP POP), and up past 10kHz (eeeeeeee), with very strange streamer effects in between. The circuit is extremely stable and highly reliable. We were syncing the staccato output with the 60Hz incoming line voltage.....wwwvvvVVVWWWOOOMMmmmmppp....wwwVVVWWWOOOMMmmpp...some wild stuff.
Our findings have been that up past 1kHz, the staccato frequency starts to hurt the output sparklength severely. Sparks go from 14" with no staccato, to about about 4" with staccato at 10kHz. But it sure looks weird. Kind of like the arc from a flyback transformer when you blow air across it, just like that, except the whole 4" streamer looks that way. The common banjo effect, at 10kHz this time...
We will post a complete schematic of the entire tested, working circuit this week. Stay tuned. >>>>>>>> NO WE WON'T because, right now, the circuit is still in the design phase. It doesn't work perfect yet but developments are being made...
Pictures! We shot the following pictures through a small toroid to kindof shield from the RF (which was easily firing a small HeNe laser where the digital cam was). The toroid helped image quality a LOT.
| Halfwave Rect. Input | Ground Stikes | Halfwave Rect. Input | Filtered DC Input | Halfwave Rect. Input |
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| Pig Arc | Pig Arc 2 | 10kHz Staccato | Weird Staccato | Swords |  |
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