How to Build an Inverter[satire]

Jamie, you missed the word 'satire' in the subject. Mind you, Jon's post misses the mark because he actually uses more detail of how the project is to be done than your average clueless newbie/innocent beginner (delete as necessary). Normally it's more like 'switching it somehow' and 'a cheap transformer', etc.

Cheers.

you some options., don't use SCR's because how are you going to switch them off? further more, you may not even be able to keep them on with a narrow pulse if you don't have a minimum non inductive load and when you do that, it will stay latched on. you could use GTO's, those will let you switch off and on but still need that non inductive load with narrow pulse triggers. i suppose you could you a square wave at 60 Hz to directly control the gate. but in either case, you would need a negative pulse to turn off the GTO..

i think the best route would be using some power Fets in a push pull or H-bridge format from a square wave inverter driver.

regulation will be poor how ever. you really want to keep the FETs saturated to keep heat down in them.

the best thing to do is make your self a sine wave inverter using PWM into a high freq xformer. P.S. PWM = Pulse width Modulation

normally a sine wave reference is used with an amp to regulate voltage that drives a PW timer which in turn may operate a flip flop type circuit to select the pairs of trannies to drive.

its just a thought..

On is easy, off not quite so easy. Reminds me of the story about the guy in the lab asking the guy at the next bench "What sort of turnoff time are you getting with that SCR?". Back came the answer "I've been trying to get it off since half past eight this morning"

Thank you, Jamie. You know more than I do. I found a web site with schematics for various inverters. I don't understand how they work, but it may (or may not) be cheaper to buy the parts and build one, than to buy one outright.

J> J>