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Mains powered flyback driver for HV source?

Has anyone tried a mains-powered driver circuit for a flyback with a hand-wounded secondary to be used as a HV source? I've been experimenting with the common two-transistor driver design (with great sucess), but it needs 12-24VDC, and i want to keep the design as simple as possible as i want to build two small standalone HV displays (a Jacob Ladder and a Plasma Globe, both working fine already). I know about mains powered devices and safety (specially with HV).

So, i came along this site (

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), which describes two of such circuits. The first one is particularly interesting to me; a dimmer and a capacitor in series with the coil - as simple as it gets. It would be great if i could use a dimmer/resistor and a fuse for safety, but what kind of performance can i expect to get from such a circuit as opposed to a pulsed-drive current one like the two-transistor design or the second one in that page? Can anyone comment on these?

Reply to
Lisandro Pin
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Oh, i know they're not nearly as safe as the DC driven ones - i can deal with that. My main concern is performance.

Reply to
Lisandro Pin

So, spring the ten or fifteen bucks for parts, slap one together, don't kill yourself, and report back with your results. :-)

Good Luck! Rich

Reply to
Rich Grise

All I can see is two dangerous circuits that I wouldn't spend a single second on. Anything that is directly connected to mains supply in this manner has a very significant chance of causing the death or injury of the builder/operator. Move on to safer things.

Reply to
JustMe

yourself, and report back with your results. :-)

Just did :) It works perfectly fine, through performance is not the same as a proper high frequency driver - i get lower voltage out of the system. I can't measure it, of course, but it's clearly making shorter arcs. Evidently flybacks don't like 60hz... :(

Reply to
Lisandro Pin

Why can't you measure it? Haven't you read my instructions on how to easily make your own high-voltage ac capacitive divider? They're incorporated into Sam's high-voltage how-to web site.

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 Thanks,
    - Win
Reply to
Winfield Hill

To be honest, i didn't bother much with it - other than the "oooh!" factor of the dancing arcs, i don't really care how high is the voltage. I always went with the 1kv/mm rule of thumb.

I might try it sometime soon, if i have some spare time.

Reply to
Lisandro Pin

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