eyeofjake
New Member
First, I will say that electronics is not my main specialty. I learned what I know from college physics and from my dad being an Electrical Engineer. I'm a chemist by trade. I'm building an high voltage capacitor discharge array circuit for an experiment at work. Being that we are on a budget, I decided to do it myself.
I opted for a boost converter to keep things simple as it's DC to DC. So I wired up a 555 timer and calculated the frequency and duty cycle to bring 12 volts up to 350 max. Wired the circuit and the first time was successful on a protoboard. Wanting to make it into a cleaner circuit, I made a clone to fit a sealed chassis with firing switch. But this time, it doesn't work. So far, I have either cooked the 555 chip or the MOSFET into submission. The capacitor is getting the 12 volts and all the pins are registering voltage. From what I can see, the MOSFET isn't switching.
Despite my attempts to troubleshoot this, I can't figure out what is going on. I could really use some input.
I opted for a boost converter to keep things simple as it's DC to DC. So I wired up a 555 timer and calculated the frequency and duty cycle to bring 12 volts up to 350 max. Wired the circuit and the first time was successful on a protoboard. Wanting to make it into a cleaner circuit, I made a clone to fit a sealed chassis with firing switch. But this time, it doesn't work. So far, I have either cooked the 555 chip or the MOSFET into submission. The capacitor is getting the 12 volts and all the pins are registering voltage. From what I can see, the MOSFET isn't switching.
Despite my attempts to troubleshoot this, I can't figure out what is going on. I could really use some input.