PlasmaSonic II Driver Circuit Problems

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: Zagarus Rashkae <arbitrarily_random-at-yahoo-dot-com> 

Hi All,

I've built and tested a PlasmaSonic II SSTC recently,
but it has been plagued by a couple of problems.

1) The gate driver chips have been getting hot. I've
fried one set of driver chips already (4 chips) due to
excessive heating, but this may be due to the next
problem.

2) The voltage at all the FET gates goes only to +/-
8V, and the risetime on the gates is 1us. I don't know
what's causing this, but I am sure of the gate
transformer construction and phasing. The GDTs are
wound on the specified cores with 15 turns of trifilar
22AWG magnet wire. The voltage at the GDT inputs is a
0-12V square wave with approximately the same
risetime. I'm quite sure I used the correct parts but
I may have to check again.

Thanks in advance,

Chris Lu