The design looks super professional! Even though it didn’t work as expected, I like that you uploaded the video. Every electronics hobbyist has made a project that didn’t work the first time so I think a lot of people can relate to that. Also your video production quality is getting really good I hope you keep making youtube videos!
Thank you man! I was also thinking that tesla coils can work by zvs driver, but no one has done video about that! Thank you and I'm sure my tesla coil will also work.
I really can see how much time and love you just put in this video! You’re an amazing person that is so honest. I’m happy you showed that not everything works and sometimes we don’t even know why. I’m a big fan of you and your work !! Can’t wait to see the next video:)
The show-and-tell on a failed design is of considerable value to us hacks that are trying to do this ourselves and finding failures at every turn. Thanks for the update and sharing your trials and pain. We'll all learn from it too! :D
Excellent video, and yes projects like this can be very hard! I am working on making a LLC converter and making a video for a DIY UPS to power my computers. Lots of math and simulations though before I start burning through my reserves of FETs. GaN FETs are VERY fast and demand very good layout to use. Failing that, you will have voltage spike that kill them. That GDT is likely the culprit. Consider using an commercial SMT pulse transformer. While GaN offers conduction losses 3 times less that of silicon, the thermal resistance of the material is higher and they have a harder time dissipating heat. Coupled with the fact of being more expensive to produce, the designer tends to go with units that have the smallest gate charge. These ones are the smallest physical ones and tend to have lots of centralized heat in a small area with not much thermal mass. I'd opt for them if your coil is switching at several MHz. Below 1 MHz, just use silicon.
Hi there Leon. I can see that with time you are becoming a very good teacher. After seeing you meditating & taking your shower, you got me laughing like a mad kid & my wife was shocked. But I let her know that I'm very taken up with your videos as you are an amazing guy. I'm impressed with your talent & skills Leon. Keep it up dear. It's always a win situation with all your tesla coils but at time we must also accept failures in life as this makes us learn more & makes the best out of us. Never let yourself down little brother. But still, I'll say great work though it didn't work as expected. Just keep it up. Meanwhile take care & see you soon in your next video.
Ive been using GaN's for a while now. I typically use either a GS66504B-TR for high freq. applications (input gate capacitance is only 70pF, I can run up to 8MHz without any ZVS, just brute force) or GS66516T-MR for higher current applications, these are a bit more pricey but work really well. The thing I like the most about GaN Systems Inc. fets is that they trigger on just 5v! So super easy to build fast gate drivers using just logic chips.
@@Teslaundmehr If you're feeling up to it, I'm actually working on a staccato QCW DRSSTC right now (so far, it produces 50cm sparks from a 13cm coil). The video will be out in a few weeks, at the same time that Jay from Plasma Channel publishes his first "true" SSTC video. If you'd like to be involved, just let me know!
You put a lot of time into this video; thanks! I am really enjoying your channel! I think it's really good to show both success and failure. Can't wait till the tesla coil gun is finished :)
Hey Leon, thanks for uploading despite not getting the result you wanted. I think I can speak for many people when I say we still loved the video! By the way, did you end up making the teslagun part 2 PCB smaller? If so, how did that one perform and have you tried making a tesla gun from that? That circuit was epic so I was surprised to not see it in this video! Thanks again for the great content!
I saw some comments mentioning the addition of dead time. I did not work with GaN FETs, so I don't know their switching speed. If the driving signal is simply inverted and the transistors can't switch fast enough, there will be smoke (ask me how I know). Nowadays I use two half bridge drivers with incorporated dead time (DGD2304), and I have no problem with blown FETs or IGBTs.
Maybe you need some insulation between the body of the mosfets and the cooling block. Some stuff has internal connections with the outer body so it may have caused shorts between mosfets.
This is super cool but you should clarify that most SMD devices can totally be soldered by a regular soldering iron. It came across as if you intended to say that SMD has to be soldered by hot air
Why not just use regular isolated gate drivers instead of the gate drive transformers? It's possible that the transformer is picking up large spikes from the long wire leads during switching transients. With regular gate drivers you'll have good CMTI and controlled gate drive voltage levels which are less likely the blow up the FET
Fließen bei der Tesla - Gun die Elektronen vom Metall in den Äther oder aus dem Äther kommend zum Metall? Es sieht ja so aus, als feuere die Gun, aber kannst Du sagen, in welche Richtung sich die Elektronen bewegen ?? ( Do the electrons flow from the metal into the ether or the other way round ? It looks like the gun is firing, but can you tell which direction the electrons are moving?? ) Dankeschün und Grüße !!
I do not know electronic dialect in English and I would just like to know what is most important for the coil to work with a 300 watt ZWS? How to the best to work IT?
Maybe you made a mistake in GDT. I see you used a magnet wire instead of a plastic-sheathed wire. I noticed that the signal is worse when using a magnet wire
I very much enjoy your videos. They are very explanatory and informative! It sucks when such hard work ends with disappointing results. Honestly it appears that the power switching without the reverse protection diodes would cause massive problems. My thoughts (I'm only an experimental engineer with no college degree) is to add a second switching circuit with the power dumping through a mosfet. Although the heat generated would increase (potentially dramatically) it would save the transistors from cooking. I guess it would pretty much be a separate zvs in parallel with the original circuit. One for lower amperage and one for higher current.... I still suggest protection diodes and maybe a fuse or thermal protection switch. I built a very simple high temperature protection circuit for my drsstc and it's saved me many times. Best of wishes to you. Thank you for sharing your progress.
Were the discharges at the end of the video with GaN cascodes in the half bridge? Or, if I understood everything correctly, with silicon mosfets in the half-bridge, and everything was powered by the ZVS. Anyway, cool video, and finally someone tried to make a tesla with GaN cascodes and posted the results.
Grüß dich Leon. Ich hätte eine Frage bezüglich deiner Schaltung. In der Regel benutzt man gerne bei dem 74hc14 die ersten beiden Inverter. Jedoch sehe ich das du auch einen dritten Inverter nutzt. Welchen Gedanken hast du dir dabei gemacht? Ich denke es geht hier im die Inventierung des Signals....aber würde das nicht auch mit zweien gehen? Jedoch sehe ich oft das dann kein Treiber IC genutzt wird, sondern einen Bipolare Stufe aus NPN und PNP....eventuell könntest du da Licht ins dunkle bringen. Besten Dank und Top Videos!
Hallo Hans, danke für deinen Kommentar. Du hast recht, im Prinzip reicht sogar schon ein Inverter aus. Ich denke sogar mittlerweile, dass je weniger desto besser sind, da es mit jedem Inverter eine kleine Phasenverschiebung gibt, welche wir ja absolut nicht wollen ;)
Very nicely done!! Could it be due to faulty gate drive ICs? Such as shoot through or possibly the tied inputs are maybe causing some type of crosstalk?
I guess this is the best place to ask for this. Is there a free program/site I could use to draw schematics like shown in the video? What are you guys using?
Grüße Leon? :D, Geile Sache was aus dir geworden ist, respekt dafür =). was nicht schlecht währe du den Schaltplan später für alle (öffentlich) hochladen tust. Soweit wie ich das es verstanden habe: nimmst du die normale "Schmitt Trigger" Schaltung, gehst dann auf die beiden Mosfettreiber und nach den Mosfetreiber auf die beiden GDTs, die "Endstufe" befeuerst mit ner ZVS Schaltung? Wenn du jetzt noch die ZVS Schaltung überarbeiten würdest das sie die Ausgangsspannung konstant hält währe echt geil :D: Lg.
That's some impressive SMD work right there. It would almost be too good to be true to have such a complex build just magically work perfectly at first but that's why I'm too lazy to go SMD cause I know there will be failures and it will be 10x harder to repair. Hard to say what could really be the culprit aside from the usual suspects but I assume the GAN's helped with driving it as a full bridge at ~1mhz using what seems like maybe 4A pk capable dual gate drivers. Dead time seems to be more crucial with GAN's so that's a possibility and I haven't quite figured that all out yet. I have some builds very slight changes to the rise/fall times makes a huge difference in how cool the switches run even though any variation seems like it would work well or about the same. With cheap 460 drop in replacements and still the same overheating though it might need a dang IR gun to pin point what is burning. Gate signals look super good though, 76ns rise using 10 ohm resistors and a GDT seems almost impossible.
Hey Bro, thanks for your feedback! Really appreciate that. I found out that for driving GAN fets its the best idea to use special drivers...I will work on it!
@@Teslaundmehr Drivers specifically for GAN fets makes sense. I'm curious if it ended up just not seeming practical to use silicon fets though whether it be the heat dissipation or drive requirement. I want to try it but not spend a ton of money on dead GANs lol.
While this is certainly a worthy project, I would have much preferred to see it run directly off the AC line thereby greatly simplifying the design and eliminating the output transformer. We are dealing with high voltages anyhow so a hot-chassis design is not much of a deterrent.
your pcb design is the problem kills the mosfets😂too thin wire induces high ESL which causes high voltage peaks and boom！using copper plate and adding some absorption capacitors parallel to DS（as close as possible） will help it better ALSO you can try to series an tuned capacitor with primary（must resonate with primary in secondary freq）do some phase shifting（let Vds phase the same as Iprimary，killing the high voltage peak） will make it even more powerful
If i can read schematics correctly then it's yet another externally-controlled Mazzilli (the DynaVap style...), so no joy there as that's still some unfinished/antiquated PROTOTYPE actually... M'well, the mention of GaN did make me look. But if you're into musical Tesla coils then just search YT for it: ru-vid.com?search_query=Musical+Tesla
