Dan's Technology Chronicles

I've never been fully satisfied with my past SSTCs. Not for a lack of performance, but for a lack of visual appeal. Now, admittedly, the coil's appearance isn't going to be terribly relevant once the lights are off and the streamers are flying. Nonetheless, I would not be satisfied until I had conquered this discrepancy. With public demonstrations in the future for this coil, there was additional incentive to produce an attractive assembly. Elysium, as I had preemptively deemed the device, was to be my best work yet.

With the coil now complete, I can happily say that it has lived up to its name. Combining the enticing output of an SSTC with a sleek acrylic case, Elysium has met and exceeded all design parameters.

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  The Saga

  A rather thorough recount of the design and construction process of Elysium.

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  Controller

  Schematic of the control electronics. The PLL portion is based on Steve Conner's DWSSTC. The staccato controller is based on work by John Freau and others.

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  Power

  Schematic of the power section of Elysium. It is based around a half-bridge of Fairchild FGH50N6S2D IGBTs.

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  The streamers

  A nice shot of the streamers produced by Elysium. Note the extremely straight VTTC-like streamer off to the right.

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  Longer exposure

  This slightly longer exposure demonstrates the raw power of an SSTC's output.

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  Single shot

  A single streamer can be seen in this picture. It exhibits a peculiar corkscrew nature common to most SSTC streamers.

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  Coil vs. Me

  This picture gives a good sense of the size of the device and its output.

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  Fully Assembled

  Here is the assembled Elysium device in all of its glory (well, I suppose the primary still needs some cosmetic work..).

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  Front Closeup

  A closeup shot of the front of the device. The key-switch and power LED are on the left, while the staccato BPS adjust potentiemeter and push-button input are on the right.

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  Left Side

  Angled shot from the left. One of the 92mm cooling fans is visible here. The fans run off of ~9v for quiet operation.

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  Right Side

  The right side of the device. The control electronics are readily visible here. A small hole in the acrylic case can be seen near them that allows for adjustment of the PLL's phase control trimmer.

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  Coil Winding

  Here is the lathe-like setup I use for winding my secondary coils. The hand-crank, in my opinion, allows superior control over winding than a motor, while still being similarly fast.

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  Coil Varnishing

  Using basically the same setup as my winding rig, a stepper motor is used to slowly turn the secondary while it is being varnished and drying. The power supply and function generator on the right are used to drive the stepper motor (yes, it is overkill for this task, but I did not have access to any other suitable motors at the time).

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  Initial Testing

  "First light" was achieved with this test setup, prior to final assembly. Note the copious use of clip-leads ;).