Oznog
Active Member
I have a xenon strobe tube I'm trying to fire. It's pretty big. I have a 300uF cap bank and the charger takes it up to 435v which should be plenty.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/09/093601.pdf
I've got a nice big trigger transformer. It's powered off the main cap bank, the primary is in series with a 0.022uF cap in parallel with a 47Mohm resistor.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/09/114265.pdf
The primary is pulled down by a high voltage FET which should be capable of 5 amps at that gate voltage. The FET's triggered by a pulse from a PIC. The tube current also goes through a FET so I can make it "twinkle" a bit with short flashes by cutting short the discharge cycle and pausing before retriggering.
Anyways, the cap charges fine and the PIC seems to be properly switching the tube onto the cap and then powering the trigger. But the tube won't fire. I measured the pulse with the caps only charged to 12v and the transformer secondard hit about +150v on the scope. As far as I know that's supposed to be positive. I can't measure the pulse with my scope directly since it's around 6kV.
I don't get it. Why doesn't this ******* fire? There's nothing going on in that tube that I can see or hear.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/09/093601.pdf
I've got a nice big trigger transformer. It's powered off the main cap bank, the primary is in series with a 0.022uF cap in parallel with a 47Mohm resistor.
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2005/09/114265.pdf
The primary is pulled down by a high voltage FET which should be capable of 5 amps at that gate voltage. The FET's triggered by a pulse from a PIC. The tube current also goes through a FET so I can make it "twinkle" a bit with short flashes by cutting short the discharge cycle and pausing before retriggering.
Anyways, the cap charges fine and the PIC seems to be properly switching the tube onto the cap and then powering the trigger. But the tube won't fire. I measured the pulse with the caps only charged to 12v and the transformer secondard hit about +150v on the scope. As far as I know that's supposed to be positive. I can't measure the pulse with my scope directly since it's around 6kV.
I don't get it. Why doesn't this ******* fire? There's nothing going on in that tube that I can see or hear.