First light of a Tesla Coil tuner.

So I needed to get a better Tesla coil Tuner. I have been using this NE555 pinger for 10+ years.

Always said I’d put it in a box.. Never happened…

With some of the tuning problems I’ve had recently I needed a better solution.

So..

 

 

 

 

 

PIC powered USB controlled Tesla Coil Tuner using AD9850 DDS Frequency Synthesis.

Built on a PIC low pin count, USB development board (hence redundant RS232 connector)

Direct connection to the Primary Coil with current measuring.

Three ways of measuring.

Primary and cap on its own(Secondary removed)

Secondary on its own (driven by primary with no Primary cap)

Primary Cap and Secondary (across spark gap) – Should see both current dips.

 

First plot of a small Secondary coil, using VB to drive the USB.

Plots at ~15 seconds for 1000 points (e.g will scan from 500Khz to 1.5Mhz in 1khz steps in ~15 seconds.)

 

Range 50Khz to 4Mhz (with some droop at each end)

I’m having some issues getting a plot with just a primary coil, not sure why at the moment. Also my driver (tc428) is damaged, its not driving correctly to ground. Which may be causing me some issues. But not bad for a first go.

More developments

Added an Ariel input (B)

Improved the display, and removed a whole load of noise on the traces.

Also, added the ability to take snapshots of the traces (pale colours) so you can see any change from scan to scan

This shows a current scan in Dark blue, with a snapshot in light blue and the Ariel input in dark green with a light green snapshot. The current scan was done with my hand near the topload hence the lower resonant frequencies.

This clearly shows the primary (C & L) as a large dip on the left and the secondary / topload as the smaller dip on the right. I’m feeding the primary coil and primary cap in parallel as this gives the best indication of the current change in the primary. For some reason driving the coil with Cpri in series shows a lumped resonance (or doesn’t show the primary resonance up at all)