styropyro

new equipment

Added 2022-12-17 22:06:44 +0000 UTC

when it comes to my vacuum tube creations, most of what I have done so far has been a product of trial and error. part of that is the inherent nature of plasma devices. unlike many circuits nowadays, these are extremely difficult to simulate since the circuit's load is highly complex and variable. although this can be frustrating, it does lead to a whole art form of making plasma generating circuits.

the other big issue with these circuits is that they are difficult to probe. such high voltages and high frequencies do not play well with most test equipment. I've been in the market for a probe for measuring various parameters of my tube circuits for quite some time, but all of the high voltage probes I could find within my budget had a sharp derating curve at the frequencies I'm interested in. Thanks to Steve Ward (a tesla coil legend) I learned about these old vacuum capacitor voltage dividers.

This one wasn't cheap, but it can measure up to 100kV, and it has a flat response curve up to 20MHz. It also can plug directly into my scope to view waveforms there. To top it off, it only has a mere 4pF of capacitance (or 2pF when used doubled ended) so it won't capacitively load down my tube circuits by much when taking measurements. There's not much I won't be able to measure with the setup, but I do worry about x-ray generation at the higher end of the voltage ratings.

First order of business for this meter is to optimize the grid circuit on my big vacuum tube tesla coil before I feed it a bunch more power. I'm starting to approach world record territory with that setup, and this meter will help me inch closer. Stay tuned!