I am wondering if anyone has had some experience with saturable core switches or magnetic pulse compression systems for high power pulses. I am trying to use the saturable core switch instead of a spark gap for high power pulses. I have been able to find some information on saturable core switches, but I was hoping to find more information on how to fine tune a switch rather than using trial and error.


Chad

Are you thinking of a saturable core reactor with a switchable tertiary winding, maybe? It would help if you told us what you were trying to do.

Yes I am thinking of saturable core reactor. I am going to be using it as a switch. I am going to be using it in conjuction with a IGBT that has a relatively low peak current rating. The purpose of the saturable core switch will be to hold off the discharge from a capacitor while I charge the capacitor with the IGBT. Then when the core saturates hopefully I will have a very rapid rise time of the current in the capacitor discharge and a peak current much higher than my IGBT can handle. I was just hoping there was an easy way to figure out the hold off time for a given number of turns around the core, or any other tricks that people may know about using a saturable reactor in this fashion.

Chad

Still not sure what you are doing or how you intend to use it. I can tell you that the rise time of the current through this or any other inductor is not impressive, they do the opposite of what I think you want, they don't block DC, and the blocking time for an AC waveform is probably going to be a lot shorter than what it takes to charge a cap bank.

On a more helpful note, if you have been blowing IGBT's, try a big MOSFET instead. More expensive, like $20 vs $7, but much better at withstanding punishment.

Perhaps I will look into that then. Thanks for your response.

Heh. Could be something with a Tesla coil, it has a spark gap... but I'm going to guess it's a coin-shrinker, and that he doesn't know you can build a triggered spark gap.

Oh.

Dang.

Well, thanks for the warning. If I spent the time explaining how to make a triggered spark gap to him, I certainly would have upset our Illuminati overlords.
ΔΘψΦΛ

Well I hope Tom Hanks doesn't accidentally give away the secret of free energy. I shudder to think how close I came to unintentionally putting it in chadj2's hands.