Victor W.
Luke Noah Vyres
Been busy for a few days - building this!
Remember my last DIY Studio Flash? Well it's great but I thought it would be miles better if it was portable. So after realising I should've spent more time listening to my tutors when I studied electronics all those years ago I had another crack at building an inverter to generate 300 odd volts DC from a SLA battery.
Finally success!
This again is from scrounged parts, (as it's far cheaper and way more fun), and so far has cost less than £20 which suits me fine. The two strobe tubes are lying flat this time to make them less susceptible to damage, two inverters so that it charges much faster, (well there's two tubes so why not double up - much easier!), SCR power control and it was a tough job squeezing it all into this little box I can tell you!
Really wished I'd listened to my old tutors when it came to flyback inverter design, took about a dozen attempts at winding toroidal cores before I got it right!!
Wanted to go out and test it but typically it's raining again and the one thing I didn't do was make the damn thing waterproof! (I'm not that good.)
100 W/S Portable Flash powered by SLA battery in a 120w x 120h x 190l housing
Infinitely variable power control from 1W/S to 100W/S
Fixed anode voltage to tubes, duration of flash controlled by SCR
(This enables a constant 5600K colour output unlike variable voltage designs)
<3 seconds charge time at full power, at half power down can keep up with my Olympus dSLR's 3.5 frames per second rate, (very nice!)
Yet to check battery life.......
For you doubters and mathematicians there's two 1100uF capacitor banks in there, so: (330v ^ 2 * 0.0011F )/2 = 60W/S per bank, allowing for losses means approximately 100W/S final output.
Just need to put the thing into practice now and see if she burns out ;-)
Luke Noah Vyres
Been busy for a few days - building this!
Remember my last DIY Studio Flash? Well it's great but I thought it would be miles better if it was portable. So after realising I should've spent more time listening to my tutors when I studied electronics all those years ago I had another crack at building an inverter to generate 300 odd volts DC from a SLA battery.
Finally success!
This again is from scrounged parts, (as it's far cheaper and way more fun), and so far has cost less than £20 which suits me fine. The two strobe tubes are lying flat this time to make them less susceptible to damage, two inverters so that it charges much faster, (well there's two tubes so why not double up - much easier!), SCR power control and it was a tough job squeezing it all into this little box I can tell you!
Really wished I'd listened to my old tutors when it came to flyback inverter design, took about a dozen attempts at winding toroidal cores before I got it right!!
Wanted to go out and test it but typically it's raining again and the one thing I didn't do was make the damn thing waterproof! (I'm not that good.)
100 W/S Portable Flash powered by SLA battery in a 120w x 120h x 190l housing
Infinitely variable power control from 1W/S to 100W/S
Fixed anode voltage to tubes, duration of flash controlled by SCR
(This enables a constant 5600K colour output unlike variable voltage designs)
<3 seconds charge time at full power, at half power down can keep up with my Olympus dSLR's 3.5 frames per second rate, (very nice!)
Yet to check battery life.......
For you doubters and mathematicians there's two 1100uF capacitor banks in there, so: (330v ^ 2 * 0.0011F )/2 = 60W/S per bank, allowing for losses means approximately 100W/S final output.
Just need to put the thing into practice now and see if she burns out ;-)