Building an Aliexpress DRSSTC 

It might be. Hard to say

I just searched for DRSSTC on aliexpress and its one of the first results. Its a cheap all-in-one board with driver and power section built-in.

The driver is self resonating, but the primary resonance still needs to match the secondary resonance if you want it to work properly. My setup is around 187KHz with arc loading. I also ended up increasing the primary capacitance to 100nF and decreased the number of primary turns to reduce the coupling between the coils.

@@lewisse5 I went ahead and bought a coil from ebay (talked them into re-listing it for the $52 they had it for before de-listing it LOL). Got a top load coming in from china also (like 6") and bought their optical controller as well since the one you used it way too expensive. I will have to research how to go about determining the resonant frequency of the secondary without pulling an arc and the primary given it is in a circuit - will have to find the schematics to get a feel of what they are doing exactly. IDK how else to do it on the primary since firing this thing up without a secondary likely would result in disaster. But the coil I bought is supposed to be for this driver. Seems like tuning the primary like you would a SGTC might be easer (wind it with like 10 or 12 awg bare wire and use alligator clips to tune it - IDK if that is a bad or good idea with these though.

@@bertbronson8395I think the typical way is to approximate it with JavaTC or something similar. The secondary coil itself changes the primary circuit's resonant frequency a little bit, but I think a way of making sure the primary circuit at least oscillates is to put a piece of iron or something inside the coil to absorb some of the energy.

I bought some FGA60N65SMD

@@lewisse5 Fantastic - thanks!

I dont know what P2 is, but the coil itself is musical. I play music on it near the end of the vid.

@@lewisse5 I understand, I would like to assemble a coil like the one you assembled, could you give me your contact details so I can answer some questions? I'm grateful!

Loneoceans built a similar coil a couple years ago. He has a full write-up about it and is what I used as reference for my build. Even my big DRSSTC is based on his work. www.loneoceans.com/labs/drsstc1/

tmax-electronics.de/product/midistick-v1-2/

Its connected to house ground. I haven't had any interference issues with other electrical devices so far.

@@lewisse5 i have mine also connected to house grounds, however mine seems to not work properly still

Here you go www.thingiverse.com/thing:6198246

@@lewisse5 Thanks a lot !

I think mine was 26 AWG. 1600 turns

@@lewisse5My last comment brings up an important question... how sensitive to the wire awg and #of turns are drivers like these? I assume it self-tunes - virtually no specs on these things so I have no real idea.

@@bertbronson8395 Ya, read deeper for the consistent 800-1600 turns of between micronal and thumb-thick SUUUUPER helpful answers that everyone seems to copy and paste..... makes me think you should get the thickest stuff you can afford and enough of it to do at least 1000 turns but there are so many variables in coil design that it's a try-it-after-you-buy-it scenario

@@nathanieljames7462 I just bought the coil off ebay (havent got it yet).

I suspect it used fake IGBTs, since the price of the entire board was less than just the individual parts. I was also running realy high on-time (120us). I already have it back up and running, it only took 15 minutes to replace the IGBTs.

I think it would be easier to just build a proper driver than to start modifying.

😂 why do we think it popped?

26,5 cm High 0,14 Draht , ca 190 - 200 Khz , Toroid 23 cm X 5 cm With First Coil under 180 Khz

thanks man