mosfet turn on voltage

[firewater]

What is the minimum voltage needed to turn this mosfet on and where is it shown on this data sheet?

https://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~pharden/ref/_IRF510.pdf

 

[Sceadwian]

It's not that simple, it's a mosfet. Gate on\voltage is dependant on the voltage between gate and source (under all circuit conditions) and the drain voltage determines the on state resistance. If the source voltage rises for any reason (resistance to ground) the on voltage of the gate will change.

 

[firewater]

Voltage between gate and source will be 5V,drain voltage will be 12V.

 

[kchriste]

According to the datasheet, a typical IRF510 will only be able to switch apx 1Amp with a gate-source voltage of 5V. You should be using a logic level FET for this purpose.
To find the gate voltage required to fully turn a FET on, look for the Rds(on) specification. For yours, a gate voltage of 10V will give a drain to source resistance of less than 0.54 ohms (It looks like a typo in the spec sheet because they put a W there instead of a hm: symbol)

 

[audioguru]

The IRF510 is very old and is not a good Mosfet.
The datasheet shows that its input threshold voltage is from 2.0V to 4.0V where it conducts only 250uA.
If its threshold voltage is 4.0V then it won't conduct much with a 5.0V input.