Alright, ladies and gents, I am working on my first real DIY project: a plasma arc. I have two computers worth of electronics and determination. Halp?
But seriously. I have a pretty good guide, but I am indeed a noob. Any suggestions/steps/advice on where to start?
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But what do you want to do, just make arcs right now?
Haha I'm going to post there too, but I want to generate some traffic here as well.
Also, you probably should've put this in the circuits forum.
Oops :o:o
I want to make it into a plasma arc speaker, actually.
And yeah, I struggled with it, but finally decided that it ended up here because it's more about the act of the project and DIY'ing it than it is about the arc itself...if that makes sense, haha.
I'd recommend you just start with making an arc right now. It's pretty fun if you've never done it before. The simplest circuit for driving the flyback it this. Instead of the 2n3055 you can use the msofet that came with the flyback in the monitor.
http://www.powerlabs.org/flybackdriver.htm
Use two computer psu's in series to power it.
I can get more parts if necessary. But I agree. I'll set up a regular one first, and then improve it. Muahahaha.
Can you elaborate on that? Just drench it in blowtorch? :hai:
In 30 minutes you can get a shitload of parts.
Sounds awesome. I also have two CPUs, btw, so all the parts available in those are at my disposal.
I'm going to crack them open tomorrow and take a look-see. The monitors I should get to this weekend.
Cool. What about heat sinks/capacitors/resistors/etc? The computers are at least a decade old, btw.
A decade old? Hmm look at the PSU's. Often old ones will have nearly all the power on the 5v line, and give you only a couple amps on the 12v... not much you can do with that. The PSU's have nice parts though. Mosfets, capacitors, and inductors a plenty.
Car batteries are very nice for powering flyback circuits. Amps a plenty.
Yep. Dell's from pre-'99, and one might be from '95 or so.
I was planning on getting all the heat sinks/mosfets/capacitors out and whatnot...I might pick up an old car battery too. Shouldn't be too hard to find.
24v will give you much better results than 12.
Duly noted. I should get to run the batteries through.