We’ve witnessed a amount of people make plasma speakers about the decades listed here at Hackaday, so at first blush, the latest Plasma Channel video from [Jay Bowles] may look like additional of the same. Even his overview of the assembly of the 555 timer circuit at the heart of the setup, as in depth as it may possibly be, is some thing we have seen ahead of.
But the back again fifty percent of the movie, where by [Jay] talks about the flyback transformer utilised in this plasma speaker, truly got our notice. You see, frustrated by the constrained selections on the market for AC flybacks, he established out to put with each other a tailor made transformer using a 3D printed secondary previous of his very own layout.
Armed with a spare main, [Jay] spent some time in CAD coming up with his secondary. Regardless of under no circumstances obtaining developed a flyback in advance of, his to start with endeavor managed to develop some spectacular sparks — that is, until eventually it arced via the printed plastic and launched the crucial Magic Smoke. Influenced by this early results, he went again to the electronic drawing board and cranked his way by means of several unique iterations till he arrived up with one that did not self-destruct.
The moment he had a coil that was doing work reliably, he hooked it up to his Bluetooth-augmented 555 circuit, and started off participating in some tunes from his telephone. When it could not be our ideal way to listen to the most current episode of the Hackaday Podcast, we have received to confess that the audio quality was rather spectacular. New music coming by the air with no noticeable speaker component has an almost magical top quality to it — this is surely the sort of issue that would have gotten you burned at the stake again in the day.
Inspite of his difficulties with the printed ingredient, a seem at the final consequence is a reminder of how basic a flyback transofmer actually is when you get proper down to it. A several windings of thick wire on a person facet of the main, a total good deal of windings of slender wire on the other side, and you’re fantastic to go. Of training course, a printed jig like this surely helps make for a neater remaining products, specially if you conclude up encapsulating the entire matter in epoxy.
Not interested in winding your personal coil? [Jay] has put jointly an educational movie on setting up a high-voltage supply with the sort of commercially offered flyback you’d obtain in a CRT. If it is the singing plasma that’s acquired you intrigued, you might want to take a look at one particular of his before jobs that was based on Honda ignition coils.
