Uploaded December 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
It was too difficult trying to tune this thing at over 6Mhz with what I had laying around so I went back to a trusty 4.5Mhz or so.
It runs pretty good for some reason and I'm only really worried about some small electrolytics I've got on the rails.
Playing around with tuning at low power and lower drain voltages seems like no biggie I suppose as long as the mosfet gate is not doing any insane ringing for long periods. Getting up to the 300W region seems like more a gamble when playing with the tuning but at least there is a solid arc discharge at that point to work with. So while it may run without apparent issues at 260W, the fet might noticeably starting heating up at 300W if the tuning tweaks over in a bad way.
I'm not sure if a 4Mhz gdt can be done without making it a resonant drive anyway so for my personal purposes I could just run it around 6-7A at 50-60VDC. I might just replace the driver with one that has an enable and tune it to run interrupted with closer to 500W pulses or something. Should also be able to easily audio modulate using the VCO on the PLL chip.
It was too difficult trying to tune this thing at over 6Mhz with what I had laying around so I went back to a trusty 4.5Mhz or so.
It runs pretty good for some reason and I'm only really worried about some small electrolytics I've got on the rails.
Playing around with tuning at low power and lower drain voltages seems like no biggie I suppose as long as the mosfet gate is not doing any insane ringing for long periods. Getting up to the 300W region seems like more a gamble when playing with the tuning but at least there is a solid arc discharge at that point to work with. So while it may run without apparent issues at 260W, the fet might noticeably starting heating up at 300W if the tuning tweaks over in a bad way.
I'm not sure if a 4Mhz gdt can be done without making it a resonant drive anyway so for my personal purposes I could just run it around 6-7A at 50-60VDC. I might just replace the driver with one that has an enable and tune it to run interrupted with closer to 500W pulses or something. Should also be able to easily audio modulate using the VCO on the PLL chip.
