Inside a nasty high voltage ozone generator PSU. (with schematic)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 31 พ.ค. 2020
- I had a feeling the circuitry was going to be like this, but in a way it was simpler than expected.
This is a high voltage power supply for running dielectric barrier ozone generators like the inline air tubes and ceramic plate types.
The circuitry is clearly optimised for cost and reliability, at the cost of being quite electrically spiky. It literally shunts capacitors 100/120 times a second.
There's one slight oddity, even for such a simple circuit. I was expecting there to be something like a diac to provide a clean switching pulse to the thyristor. Instead it sees a fairly slow rise via a resistor and capacitor. The gate current on this component is a surprisingly low 200uA.
For those not familiar with thysistors, they are a power switching component that only conducts in one direction like a switchable diode. When a high enough current is flowing in the gate it causes the thyristor to latch on like a switch until the current flowing through it falls below its latching threshold. In this circuit it is being used to dump the charge on a capacitor through the primary of the simple ferrite rod transformer to induce a high voltage on the other secondary.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
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This also keeps the channel independent of TH-cam's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Just wanted to say thanks for all the insight and not yelling “like share subscribe” at the end of every video
I hate it when other channels do that. If people want to subscribe then that is their choice.
People are running businesses. You're able to consume the content they produce, most which makes very little money, for free. So there isn't really any justification for complaints. Businesses advertise, and that's how they stay in business.
Andrew Delashaw I don’t have any problems with sponsorships or people making money. Brother gotta eat. All I’m saying is a little transparency and less begging goes a long way.
@@xenonram agreed and most people don't realize how important it is to like and share and subscribe. Some channels have no understanding of how TH-cam works. And why would they?. Clive's channel doesn't suffer from that problem.
@@xenonram No one told them to start a business that won't make money if they don't say the right incantation and do the right ritual. I watch several channels that have over 500K subs and never pray at the alter of the LCS gods.
"if you've put quartz on fire, you're doing really well" if you're a dragon maybe .
I got a good chuckle out of that!
Chlorine trifluoride is what you need: "It is also hypergolic [ignites spontaneously] with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water - with which it reacts explosively."
He does have those bricks.....
Hmmmmm.....
Just William ah someone else who has read Ignition. Great book!
*sings* T-shirt!!!
There are some legitimate UV sterilizers used in salt water aquariums. They're water flowing around a tube inside an opaque outer shell though, and are put inline with all the other filter equipment.
2:46 - "Flipped the image to make it easier to reverse-engineer." Makes sense. If you're trying to _reverse_ engineer some engineering, just flip it.
Clive T-shirt : let me show you my circuit diagram
Come up to my room, let me show you my circuit diagrams...
I have those UV lamps in my aquariums, they are located in a compartment behind the false back so the fish aren't injured.
I was just about to comment that the uvc is separate from the fish and filter it's just for killing algee if I'm not mistaken
From the sound it was making in that last video, I thought it was actually defective.
The circuit is somewhat similar to a spark gap Tesla coil, except the transformer isn't resonant (and can't, since the thyristor won't allow it to resonate.)
You had the opportunity to cross out the N in Friend and it would have been called "Fish Fried"
You missed the chance to correct the "Fish Friend" to "Fish Fiend"...
Or "Fish Fried"
I was gonna say fish foe, but fried nails it.
Yea. I go for Fish Frier
Glad someone else made the comment. Non native speaker here, but from Europe across the channel. Friend or Foe/Fiend is common knowledge here on the continent. Brexit or not, we still love you. Cannot deny geography.
I was going to say "Fish -Fri- ender", but yours is better.
Jesus, that’s horrifying. That’s not coming anywhere near my station!
The challenge being keeping such away from your neighbors as well if you live in suburbia!
Well if the kitties come around you don't need to use the angle grinder. Just have them do a CAT scan...
Bravo! And that is the end of the internet. Thank you all for coming!
I had a feline someone would say that!
Get out. You are hereby banned from the internet. If I see you make a pun like that again, I'll call the police. Maybe even the *swat* team.
Dont give up your day job..... lol
@@Polite_Cat As the highest authority on the Internet*, I declare him not guilty, given that making puns is not a crime. Sorry!
* According to GRBTutorials (2020)
I had a UV 'flouro' tube back in the '80s that I used to erase 2708 style Eproms. It was about 18 inches long and had some strange looking glass, presumably to let the required UV light through.I later discovered that direct sunlight would also erase the 2708's (at least in Australia, probably not where you Scots live!)
I can confirm that sunlight in the UK doesn't erase EPROMs even after several days! I haven't tried in in Greece.
@TheRageMaker Heat and sunlight ... not always the same thing ... oh yes I remember heatwaves in the UK .. much akin to a spring day in most of Australia :D ... Joking aside ... UV was a big issue in Australia (still is) as the depletion of the ozone layer at the Antarctic was up to the southern states ... it's abated a bit (since the 80's and 90's) with the global banning of flurocarbons in most things.
Excellent info. I was considering buying one of those. Not so sure now -- and I'm fascinated to know what you learn about the UVC method. Will await your followup!
Didn't really understand much but I had to watch to the end. Fascinating stuff!
I was feeling like a fish out of water until I read this ...... I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s clueless but keen lol
That's a really ugly circuit. I particularly dislike the "let's just short out the rectified mains" bit. I doubt it would last very long, there's far to many high voltage spikes running around. Something's going to pop, which is why they've covered it up in all that glass fibre resin and other gunk.
They have obviously discovered the limitations of it's design and then had to find the best way to suppress the fires !
"Oh no, this thing just keeps bursting into flames after 10 minutes of use, what are we going to do ?"
"No need to worry, my cousins factory had a similar problem and now they have lots of this flame retardant resin going cheap"
"Wouldn't it be best to re design it so it didn't catch fire so easily?"
"That will take too long and cut profits, just seal it up so the air can't get at it, no-one will know any difference, it's not like anyone intelligent will succeed in opening it up"
Well, it's only shorting out the cap at the mains input to the whole thing. Once that's shorted out, it'd need to charge up again, essentially it's only letting a few drops of power through at a time. A capacitor is essentially an insulator, certainly at 50Hz for that size, so there's no direct connection. Only what little power can bubble through. A capacitive dripper, I believe they're called.
It won't pop, and you wouldn't design a shitty circuit then hopelessly cover it in resin to stop it self-destructing. You'd go back and design a better one. The resin is because it it outputs, say, 10Kv, from a transformer that's, say, 5cm wide, the voltage will arc from one end of the transformer, through the air, to the other. So you won't get any power out of it, it'll all be consumed as sparks across the transformer.
So, you put some good barriers in it's way, so any sparks would have much further to travel, long enough that there isn't enough voltage to do it. So the current behaves itself and goes down the leads to the ozone tube instead. Any fire-retardant is because you've got plastic around high-voltage stuff that might spark if it failed, eg the insulation cracked. Sparks get hot, and plastic is burny. So to stop a bit of cracked plastic burning your house down (these things NOT being sold direct on Ebay), appropriate measures are taken.
The design's weird but it's not inherently dangerous. No reason to think it'll pop, it's one of Clive's rare items that's actually licensed to be used in this country.
"They got it all planning to go on fire". Comments like that keep me coming back. Love it
Thank you. I need a break from the news here in California.
Our entire country is in desperate need of a break, I’m afraid. 2020 is turning out to be a very lousy year on so many levels, I really hope their will be some sunshine come 2021 as we need something to smile about once again. None of what is going on these past few months has been helpful for those of us who struggle with Complex PTSD/PTSD (regardless of the nature of the trauma).
Trump 2020
That old trusty FART neon sign transformer, one ceramic tile between two steel meshes and you got a ton of ozone made.
omg, 2 products in 1 video, clive! thank you! i was going to buy 1 of those uvc fish tubes but i think i am settled on uvc diodes and maybe those portable CCFL ozone/uvc generators
Btw if you can, reply to my message on Facebook if you use fb anymore?
I suggest you double check if that is really common mode rejection, and not wired as a choke to absorb the short.
I've looked at other similar beasts, and some even have an iron core transformer in series at that point.
That's what I thought as well, trying to absorb it.
Given the high frequency components of the spikes, even an iron core transformer would still act as a common mode choke, so it is likely doing double duty in that case. That said, this is a horrible circuit in so many respects from an RFI perspective for anyone who operates radio (or even simply cares to receive radio) as even if the transformer/choke prevents most of the back EMF spike from reaching the mains side they nonetheless used rather long unshielded conductors to the ozone generating tube that will serve as very effective antennas for radiating RFI (with peaks every 100/120Hz). It may as well be called a broadbanded radio jammer that happens to also generate ozone, sadly.
Nice job. You reminded me of something- I've noticed that my many UVC lamps, all quartz, have distinctly different odors to them. This has been a mystery to me. My most powerful one, supposedly a 60W tube, has a fresh or bleach-like smell, while some of the others have that burnt organic smell.
Ima keep it real with you, you inspired me to get in to electronics
I used to work as a coil winder in a place that made, well, coils and various devices using coils. We used resin and black marble dust to pot stuff. They told me they bought the marble dust from a place that made those shiny black gravestones.
That makes sense. The machines produce a lot of marble dust.
It did a good job too, the bigger coils had a heavy, quality feel and nice sharp corners once they'd been "encapsulated" as the foreman called it. Apropos of nothing, that foreman had a big blond spade beard and looked exactly like an Isle of Lewis chessman. But I digress...
You probably don't get any high current through the rectifier due to the high impedance of that choke at high frequency. Interesting design
So... if I've got this right, this thing is the equivalent of using an industrial arc welder to light a gas mantle...?
8o.
New to experimenting with ozone thanks ! schematic for flux capacitor
2:30 into the video "DON'T HOLD YOUR BREATH" - Well, people who did would be out cold by then, I'd assume :D
Great video as always mate
Radio HAM here as well, not only is it horrible from an RFI prospective, but what happens when that 1.5µF capacitor shorts (and it will short, it isn't the correct rating). Yeah, there will be a nice bang!
PCB traces and the diodes will hopefully blow open circuit, or the cheap and thin wire will do double duty as fuse as well. Betting that choke there though is wound with CCA wire, so it will definitely suffer failure from a few thousand pulse cycles and snap the coil wires inside from the repeated motor torque.
Hey Clive, nice video. For the matter, you can remove the potting compound by heating it up (to 80-90 C) with a heat gun or infrared lamp and them taking the pieces of epoxy, which at that temperature are pretty softened (not likea thermoplastic though, but like a habrittle rubber, that can be scrubbed easily with patience). My two cents
Well done 👍
the best circuit for sparking ignition coils as a teenager
Superb in all regards.
I found a lot of rock salt crystals mixed into potting rubber and potting resin, right in about the components in enclosures, mainly in jet ski ecu units, the crystals seem to be spread on the board then the compound is poured on top
Seems a bad idea, salt being corrosive. Especially where it's damp, say near large bodies of water. It'd corrode the PCB and component leads, nearby wires, screws, etc. Are you sure it's rock salt?
If I'm understanding the *crude* nature of this circuitry right, this has at least 4-5 sources of noise and interference built into it, probably complementary to a degree. It needs to be trashed and replaced with something responsible consisting of at least 5-10x as many parts, likely. I suspect even a basic AC transformer to HV would be less hazardous and noisy than this with a couple support compoments. Who the hell came up with this?!
1. Thyristor
2. Sharp spiky 1.5uF capacitor (on charge and again when the thyristor kicks, shorting to ground, double points there).
3. Coil primary because of #2, I suspect that basically acts as an antenna with all those windings.
4. Coil secondary because of #3 (unsure if I can count that too).
5. The short circuit to ground the thyristor provides (double duty with #2 and mains neutral) causing mains-side interference if it weren't for the (likely) heroic attempt by the common-mode suppression choke. Probably still some there, but not near as much.
China. China came up with it.
And yet the manufacturer felt the need to protect his masterpiece from reverse engineering.
It reminds me way back when I was a kid playing around with a 3-volt relay. I discovered that you make a little buzzer by setting it up so that energizing the relay broke the power connection. It also sent static to the radio. I thought it was neat. Then some time later I discovered you could do the same thing by having the relay short itself out when energized, and it was much more noisy.
This is China we're dealing with, so I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for safe, responsible circuits when they view their own citizens as cheap and disposable.
@@hyperboloidofonesheet1036 My brother did something similar as a cruel science project for school. Using the commutator of a DC motor to make/break the circuit to a small transformer wired up backwards to use its primary as an HV winding. If I recall it had something like the ark of the covenant with two metalized statues that you would grab, closing a switch, and thus shocking the user.
Methylene chrloride (the liquid in those bubbling xmas ornaments) has always worked well for me in depotting things. It will dissolve those caps if you forget it for too long.
Depending on the potting compound, you can just dip it into a pot of boiling water for around 10 minutes according to this source th-cam.com/video/OiPe6f4Oh8E/w-d-xo.html . Makes the hard epoxy turn into soft stuff you can more easily scrape away. I have a bad habit of burrowing through it with a hot soldering iron with a pointy tip - it works, but not sure if the fumes are very safe.
@Kevin Counihan Also sold as "Aircraft Stripper". Nasty stuff, but useful.
@@threeMetreJim Most epoxies soften at around 70-90C as they reach their glass transition temperature, but for those that do not you can use a blend of methylene chloride, methyl ethyl ketone and acetone, sold by fibreglass shops as resin remover, and it does remove resin, amongst other things. Will also strip your skin of oils and fats, and will dissolve into you as well, so wear 2 pairs of nitrile gloves, and use in a very well ventilated area, and avoid contact with the stuff with the gloves, because it dissolves them as well, just not instantly on contact. Had some potting resin that took nearly a month to dissolve in it, releasing the PCB inside. OK lost all the resistors and capacitors outer coatings, but at least the IC packages survived, along with most of the PCB.
Pretty cheap and awful circuit, but lots of thanks for digging through all the black gunk for our entertainment! The fish frenemy is also available Down Under, and has been marketed as a way of controlling tank algae!
Also: This explains why a chemist I saw on TH-cam found that his ozone generator (same style, possibly not the same circuit) didn't perform very well and got very warm in operation.
The UV ozone generators used in the hospital disinfection 'robots' emit several hundred watts of intense UVC from xenon flash lamps.
This appears to be a classic electronic ignition circuit. I converted my old 1950 car ignition to use one of these ignitions.
I doubt the 1M resistor current (400uA max) will fire any SCR. They generally need a few mA to fire.
I suspect the "SCR" has a diac in the gate so the gate charges up to about 25V and then discharges the 240nF into the gate to fire the SCR. A few microseconds later the current in the transformer primary reverses and resets the SCR and the excess current then recharges 1uF. This cycle repeats every 200us.
Excess current drawn from the mains during SCR ON time is limited by the 1.5uF.
This thyristor only requires 200uA.
Some telly's back in the 70's had a thyristor oscillator for the horizontal deflection.
RCA XL-100 sets like the CTC-74 chassis models had them.
Oh god. The RFI this circuit must give off has to be immense
I believe the ozone generating claims of these crappy devices! I use these generators with aquarium air pumps to bubble into 2500 gallon tanks of rainwater for final purification. Pump air in, output hosed to a submerged bubble stone, murky water clears in a couple of hours. Anything in the water ends up as dust on the bottom of the tank, any chlorine smell in the water is dissipated. I've read the the warnings, but ozone is used in municipal and large facility water systems so I'm not too worried. Running the setup indoors will run people out of the large room quickly, very strong "crispy" ozone smell.
Only problem, the generator power box craps out after 30-40 hours of intermittent use. It never gets very hot, just goes silent. The heat sink looking aluminum plate on the bottom isn't one, but it is darn close to the primary wires of the HV transformer. The generator "tube" seems to be quite robust, other than being thin glass. But no signs of internal plating or darkening or being eaten up by the quite energetic corona.
Thanks Clive, now I have leads on possible solutions, as well as renewed fear of the chesign. (Chinese/Cheap design)
I wonder if the thyristor is being pounded to death, especially perhaps being in a linear region for too long due to the slow turn on?
Perhaps put a heat sink on the tab? (which would have essentially mains voltage on it!)
I kind of like the idea of the Fish Fiend acting as an automatic fish cooker...
I used uvc tube in my fish tank that helped a lot against algae building, but I put it unreachable for the fish at the back of the tank. It worked almost one full year. (8W like yours).
Yes - it is effective to have it so that only the tank water can be in its "sight". Like have a pump cycle the water through a container of some sort in which the lamp is enclosed at.
I usually just opted for several fish that ate algae and they were always very effective in preventing algae buildup back when I still had aquariums. They were a rather low maintenance solution since they largely took care of themselves.
Thats very interesting.
I like it
The subtitles on your videos are like an old Maxell advert! Me ears are alight!
I was toying with the idea of the in tank "steriliser" thing for use with my co2 laser water coolant to help reduce the algae blooms that the tube creates but the idea of having it in a fish tank just rang lots of alarm bells with me.. You seem to have the same train of though as me.
Think I'd be tempted to go chemical for a water cooling system and add some fountain algae preventer - usually based on benzalkonium chloride (BAK)
@David Burgin Those are different. They allow the water to run through a jacket. (Similar to the first unit he showed in the video.) The one in the video (the "fish enemy") is just a light, where the water uggs exposed on the outer surface. So if you paint it black, it will be rendered useless.
The smile direct club advert, that girls gnashers ain't the trouble, an aligner for her boss eye would be favourite!
the circuit on that reminds me a lot of a photoflash trigger circuit. they did that "charge a cap in series with the transformer primary and short it out" trick to fire the strobe's trigger transformer off. Of course there's a resistor (100K or more) in series to charge it up, and it isn't shorting its own power supply out when it fires. Theoretically, if the time constant is right, it could trigger the thryistor when the input voltage is nearing 0V so that shorting the supply out isn't such a big deal, but this IS china we're talking about, so if that is true it is probably purely by coinkydink.
i like the smell of ozone in the morning... have several of these as water purifying units... been drinking it for years..
There is a chap who's done a series of videos on exotic thermites, and yes, he "burns" quartz to produce silicon metal. Can dig it up if people want to enjoy the spectacle (and it is very enjoyable).
The reason for making the secondary in multiple sections is to reduce the effective parallel capacitance. The intended benefit is to push the resonance frequency. Something similar was done in the old "Xmas-tree" RF chokes. I wonder if anybody still has them? But also some of the vacuum tube HiFi amplifiers of the old used that winding configuration on their output transformers, although primary side rather than the secondary.
I doubt that, in this case, if it's relying on the zero crossing to reset the thyristor it's going to operate at 100Hz, not really RF unless you're talking to submarines. Doesn't look like the circuit is resonant as I see it. There can be different causes for the same effect.
New personal goal, "Set fire to quartz".
Magnesium thermite.
Chlorine trifluoride. Burns through cloth, wood, test engineers, asbestos, sand, water
Hyperboloid OfOneSheet The rest of that quote is equally good and worth including:
“It [ClF3] can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminum, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride that protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
@@mrb692
Ignition!: An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants.
www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf
@@FarleyHillBilly Yup, I have the PDF version. Hardcopies are stupid expensive (or were, last I checked).
Diese Schaltung scheint ein simpler Sperrwandler zu sein.
16:20 I've only owned one ozone generator, and it was based on a UVC tube. Not having used a corona-discharge-style one, I can't really compare, but I *can* say that the UVC one put out enough ozone that I had to leave the room when it was running.
I tried making my own super-duper-size ozone generator out of some big 8-inch pvc pipes and aluminium foil. Hooked them up in parallel to 120kV from a dental XRT and essentially make several giant resonant circuits. It made enough ozone in a few minutes to give me a headache, probably shouldn't do that again. Also of course the RFI from the resonance disables all telecommunications in about a 30 meter radius LOL
Clive, if you can get your hands on dichloromethane, that usually does a really good job at softening up most potting compounds. Failing that, you could try using a 50/50 mixture of xylene and acetone, I have actually used that mixture with great success for fully dissolving polystyrene. If xylene is not easy to get, you can use toluene instead. Or if you are feeling a bit adventurous, you may try your hand at making chloroform from bleach and acetone. Chloroform is a fairly good solvent, just make sure to stabilize it for storage, by adding a bit of ethanol to it.
And FFS be careful with these chemicals. They can be very nasty.
Hey Clive, please forgive me for replying to so many old videos of yours, I'm trying to catch up, in no particular order yet.
As horrible as this circuit is on the surface, I have to say it's pretty genius too. It's simple, it works, it's cheap and it gets the job done. Either the designer is a genius or a rogue, but I doubt the latter because it would take forever to stumble on a circuit as shall I say it?...elegant as this which works and is so inexpensive.
Yeah, it no doubt it puts lots of noise on the line. It's definitely NOT power factor corrected. It may suffer from premature failure, though I see no sign of that. A fuse would have been nice. I guess they expect the in-line capacitor to limit the current, but it's not designed to do that. It would though.
Also, pointing out, when the SCR triggers, the trigger lead capacitor starts to discharge right then, not at the end of the cycle. Since the SCR shorts the power, an "end of cycle" trigger is guaranteed. As is that trigger cap discharge.
I hate to say it, but if I designed this, I may be proud. Yeah, I'd worry more about filtering and these days, power factor, but as a stupid-simple circuit, I like it.
If you've managed to set quartz on fire you've probably taken inspiration from an article (available on line) titled "Sand won't save you this time" which you should look up and read. Right now. You'll love it.
I can't say offhand whether corona discharge or UV is better for ozone production, but perpendicularly (as opposed to tangentially) I thought I'd mention the UV "air laser" I first saw in Scientific American's "Amateur Scientist" column many years ago. It's a very simple, cheap (~US$20) DIY 337 nm laser you should consider building one of- no mirrors involved, just some relatively tame HV.
Reading the description for Thyristors it occurred to me that they are a lot like transistors so I looked into a bit more and found this interesting article: www.explainthatstuff.com/how-thyristors-work.html
A Thyristor is basically 2 Transistors tied together so if when one receives current is activates the other which activates the first in a sort of positive feedback circuit. As a result a Thyristor will stay on even after the gate (middle pin) is turned off. Also analogous to T-Flip Flops or Relays. Unlike Transistors and Flip Flops a Thyristor can handle huge currents and their are versions for both AC and DC current.
Hope this helps someone (I learned basic Electronics in high school and a little in college but I don't remember any mention of Thyristors, coming back to it years later there's a lot I didn't understand back then).
Is there room for modification on this supply? What would or could be added to improve its efficiency? Or could a switch mode power supply be used instead??
@bigclivedotcom
hi
great work.
i'm trying to reverse engineer one for my self.
but i have hard time finding a 240nf 400 volt polyester capacitor in the market.
there is only 270 or 220 nf and they are much bigger than this tiny capacitor you are showing the the video.
are you sure the value of that capacitor is not in uf?
i'm new to electronics and still learning so sorry if i sound stupid.
Ozone violence, I'm right on it 😋
Thank you. I think that the UV lamp has quartz because glass would abdorb the UV light. Such Penray lamps are used to produce ozone The cylindrical ozone generating tube produces much more ozone. I think it was an invention of an engineer named Siemens. It is a smart invention because the dielectric prevents energetic discharges, or break down discharges which would produce less ozone. The ozone molecule is weak and destroyed at high temperatures. When air flows through the annular space and the are Corona discharges at higher temperatures nitrogen oxides are produced, like in lightning flashes.
Isn't the circuit basically the same principle as the old driver for xenon flash transformer and at the same time a good old fashioned light dimmer (replacing the 1M resistor with a potentiometer)?
Very similar to xenon trigger transformer circuit, but firing on every half wave.
The filler has a few other purposes. Firstly the resin expands and contracts as it's heated and cooled (Coefficient of Thermal Expansion), which can damage PCBs. The quartz (or possibly silica) filler reduces the amount of epoxy, which reduces the amount of thermal expansion and contraction. Secondly it reduces the amount of epoxy you need -- silica filler is far cheaper per volume than epoxy.
I get the impression that the engineer who designed this figured it wasn't if it catches fire it's when.
I feel so bad for hat thyristor with its shunted legs.
"Up yers... it's done" :D :D :D
You missed the opportunity Clive cross off the Fri for "Fish End" =).
If you bought it for cheap on ebay it probably is used on that new. Chinese passenger jet they put into service recently. They are still using a 240 volt system however it is running at 400 Hz just like in Western aircraft. This would be the reason for the rough operation. 400 Hz is far easier to smooth out into DC than 50 Hz. Another dead giveaway is the lack of identification stickers on both parts. Western avionics suppliers are required to mark the part numbers on the parts with indelible ink and/or "non removable" tags.
Is that fish fryer designed to be immersed in water?
As for UVC LEDs check out the Würth Electronics catalog on their German site. I happened to pass by it while browsing IR LEDs from a link that was on Great Scott's channel where he has built a "night vision" camera recently.
Cheers!
Hey Clive, your ? On which is more efficient is the question I am currently undertaking so I was wondering if you had come to any sort of conclusion in that regard? Thanks much, mate.
In my much younger days I rescued an ozone generator from the local rubbish dump. These were used to supposedly increase productivity in commercial premises. I guess the thinking was if oxygen is good for you then more reactive oxygen must be even better :(
Anyway this thing was alternative layers of copper mesh and mica about 100mm square and about 8 layers. That was connected to a high voltage transformer of around 250VA capacity. With the lights out the stack really glowed blue, sizzled something fierce and there was a massive stench of ozone soon filling the room. It was about that time I lost my sense of smell. 40 years later it's back, weird.
If you want to kill bugs then ozone plus UVC is going to get the job done. If you want to kill bugs and not harm humans in the vicinity then 222nm UVC seems the go. I have noticed in our buses a unit in the ceiling that has a distinctive blue glow leaking out of it. I hope it's what I think it is and we're not being told for fear of the 5G idiots going nuts.
Using UVC you cannot exceed 1% ozone concentration no matter how much light you have since creating the O3 is an equilibrium reaction. The UVC creates and destroys the O3 constantly. Using an electric discharge you can get far highter concentrations and it's probably far more energy efficient. It also greatly helps if you feed it pure oxygen instead of air.
Sure but you'd keep blowing fresh air through it. You wouldn't want > 1% ozone in an inhabited atmosphere anyway, or anything like it.
I use a 80$ uv light for my tank. But IT IS COMPLETELY SEALED in A Black case... This would kill my Oscar in a sec
You mentioned the capacitor if it was a neon tube but the ozone plates act as capacitors provided they aren't cracked or shorting.
Is quartz a good heat conductor? I’m wondering if quartzy resin keeps things cooler than plain resin
No it is more there as a very cheap and very non reactive filler material, as it is basically silicon dioxide in pure form. It also prevents cracks from propagating in the resin, as it forms a crack stopper for when the stress from thermal expansion and from shrinking in curing breaks the epoxy itself. Slightly better thermal conductor than resin, but if you want better thermal performance you will have used fumed silica in a high proportion, so that it allows good thermal transfer through the resin, and also you use a lot less resin, though it makes for high wear on things like your filling machines as you are basically pumping grinding paste through them.
Thanks, new to me: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fumed_silica
How does the function of that circuit compare to the fly back transformers of the old B&W tvs?
Fish Friend, more like Fish Fryer.
Would that power supply perhaps be less harsh if supplied with 400Hz power as it would be on an aircraft?
Would the resin fill really defeat the slots? I would naively expect it harder to arc through solid insulating material than air.
If you mean the slots in the white resin it's me who cut those to explore what was inside. It's usually a solid block.
On the circuit board? The slots are cut to avoid "creepage", which is stray current going through contamination on the surface. That's different than "clearance", which is there to avoid arcing across the gap.
A good way to think about it is that creepage is the distance that the ant crawls, while clearance is the distance that the crow flies.
The effect of resin depends on how it's applied. If the whole circuit board is cast into a solid block of resin then you are correct, breakdown is limited by the dielectric strength of resin, which is higher than the dielectric strength of air. But here, resin was just dribbled over the top, and it may have filled in the anti-creepage slots in the circuit board without covering up nearby conductors.
Creepage is related to creeping failure: when an insulator has a high electric field along its surface, a progressive failure can occur, creating a conductive path along the surface. That gives it its name because the path slowly "creeps" from one conductor to another. It can occur at electric field levels even lower than required to arc through air. It only occurs on surfaces because it's partly a chemical reaction with air (that's also why different insulating materials have different levels of susceptibility). It can't cross air gaps because there's nothing in the gap to become conductive.
So, if the circuit board has open slots in it, creeping failure can't occur across the slots. If the circuit board is completely covered in resin on all sides, creeping failure can't occur through the resin. But if there is just enough resin to fill the slots without covering the traces and pads, then creeping failure is once again possible, defeating the purpose of the slots.
radio hams? nice.
The description of the common mode choke was confusing. When the current flows in the circuit the magnetic fields are in opposite directions around the core and cancel out. When the current is common mode interference the fields then reinforce each other so that there is inductance to reduce the current flowing as would happen with two separate ordinary inductors.
Try a HV transistor like the TV Hout transistor and build a blocking oscillator using that HV transformer - run via dropping resistor from mains to limit voltage current in event of failure
These ozone power supplies also come in a 12V version which seems to be a lot better, could you possily get one and look at it/compare?
"It must have broken their accountant's heart when they said 'we have to include this or we can't sell this'". You forget, it's an aircraft part. Those things always cost ten times more than consumer parts, so they didn't lose much profit margin adding that choke.
Don't worry, version 3 will be coming out soon. cheaper epoxy (the stuff you buy in bulk for pennies per pound), and they will be filling it with the finest dried riverside mud as filler, with the special ingredient of ground up PCB material after the copper has been extracted as further filler. then that expensive inductor will be replaced, first with a smaller one with recycled ferrite core, then by one with CCA wire and a dozen recycled metal punchings as core. Version 6 will simply omit it for a recycled jumper wire, and a scattering of metal shavings on top with the epoxy fill.
You remember those cheap power supplies with the power factor correction inductor in them, that was simply a transformer laminate pack ( because those are cheap) and a single turn of wire through it, then injection moulded to look like it was an actual transformer.
Tom Who needs radio reception when flying? Let’s just turn all our aircraft into flying broadband radio jammers...surely nothing could go wrong!
I would certainly hope those never hot anywhere near any aircraft, though I would never put it past Chinese manufacturers to try!
do you ever take pictures of this stuff on with your thermo heat sensing camera? can u test for uv rays on that thing?
Heat sensing cameras are IR, not UV. Wrong side of the visual spectrum.
So it’s basically a non-resonant poor man’s solid-state tesla coil. It looks a lot like something I built with a flyback transformer when I was a kid.
To disintegrate the epoxy potting compound, soaked it in paint remover (methylene chloride)
Over night.
The neighbourhood cats turned up to watch you angle grind? Your Scottish cats would have ours for breakfast
Should have just filled the power supply with the prop gunpowder and blown it all apart 😂
Clive its happened the Mail on line and Vanessa Chalmers has published an article on the benefits of all of UVC including in the first photo a pretty LED blue lamp..
That seems appropriate for the mail. Clueless misinformation.
JOKING!?!? It's amazing, in the Daily Mail's continuing quest to divide everything in the Universe into things that either cure cancer, or cause cancer, ionizing radiation didn't make it onto the "BAD" list. Still, their cretinism literally cannot surprise me any more.
Fuck it, I'm gonna send them a pamphlet on the benefits of 240V mains for haemorhoids. I'll put loads of bits of soft-focus greenery on the pamphlet, as well as a woman in a lab coat holding a test tube. I'll make sure to call it something that sounds scientific but isn't, and dig through the bin under Deepak Chopra's shredder for an explanation of how it works.
Getting Daily Mail readers to electrocute themselves, I might save democracy!
The designers of that should be forced to have a full frontal lobotomy.
Aircraft electricity runs at 400Hz. Wouldn't that make a difference WRT the transformer?
A elegant circuit is economical and efficient and robust in design and makeup. see yera 1962
I've never seen quartz filled resin in anything I've ever taken apart...
Last year I installed a 208V/240V 10A autotransformer potted in what I suspect was quartz filled resin. The filler was definitely some sort of crushed mineral, visible because the resin wasn't dyed.
well now u gotta hook it up 2 a proper supply !! pretty pwease !! I'm thinking to make one out of a standard fluorescent tube.... Hoping that when the tube is illuminated, it will become conductive enough to become the inner electrode. Outer electrode... Power supply will be fun. Then again I keep thinking that the first order of business is to merely find out if its easier just to use normal materials. 2 wires / metal sheets and the correct plastic film / pvc ?
So kindoff a CDI module, but powered from mains... They could at least add a current limiting resistor on the other leg of the supply.
Hi Clive Im looking for a transformer to power my vttc project properly .. im after a 10kva or bigger at around 5 to 6kv can you help