Continue to Site

Welcome to our site!

Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

  • Welcome to our site! Electro Tech is an online community (with over 170,000 members) who enjoy talking about and building electronic circuits, projects and gadgets. To participate you need to register. Registration is free. Click here to register now.

Strobe light power supply - How does this work?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Andy1845c

Active Member
I'm sure this is a simple question, but I'm going to ask anyway.

I stared at this thing for 20 minutes last night and can't get my head around how it works.

How does the 3v dc get stepped up to the 300+v required for a strobe light? I know the transformer does the stepping, but how does that one transistor work and how does it allow the transformer to work?



**broken link removed**
 
The power transistor is an oscillator. Part of the secondary winding of T1 applies positive feedback to the base of the transistor to keep it oscillating. Then the transformer steps up the AC voltage, the rectifier converts it to DC and the 470nF capacitor filters it.
When the voltage is high enough then the neon bulb conducts current which turns on the SCR that applies the high voltage to the trigger transformer T2 to create a few thousand volts to start the strrobe light.
 
Thanks guys.

It helps knowing what its called:) I googled 'blocking oscillator' and found quite a bit on them. I just won a scope on ebay, should be here next week. I think that circuit is the first thing I will build to look at with it.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Latest threads

New Articles From Microcontroller Tips

Back
Top