I don't want to divert you guys from the current setup, lots to explore for sure, but I think I'll implement a different approach to this experiment. I like discharging a capacitor's energy directly into the wires, and I might just do that directly with an SCR and a very low ESR capacitor bank. Than we can eliminate the transformer and not worry about the impedance matching issue. But we must have a good SCR, get those nice big pucks for hundreds of amps! We might even explode wire!
Yes EM that is an alternate approach and valid. I've got quite a few of those large hockey puck SCR's and some of the mono block types. I've refrained from using them, preferring to finesse the design rather than use the heavy handed approach. You need to be sure of proper drive, risetime and hold current to the gate to be sure you get complete propagation and turn on of current across the wafer otherwise you will develop a hot spot and melt a hole through a portion of the wafer. That's why I chose the Diac turn on technique. You can make the circuit work with just some resistance divider to the gate but this is hard on the SCR. At least that's how it was in the early days of SCR drive, perhaps more modern devices do not have this issue. Also you need a little ringing to allow the SCR to commutate off otherwise you will have to reset the system for every pulse. The matching transformer's leakage inductance does this nicely, although it can limit risetime. If you choose to eliminate the matching transformer, you can experiment with gate turn-off techniques, such as the utilization of a small inductor gate to cathode. Or you can add a little inductance in the drive path to facilitate turn off. Regardless of the approach I think you will be surprised when you hit the sweet spot of electro-acoustic resonance, which seems to occur at rather low PRR, in my setup between 100-200 PPS. The wire excursions can be quite violent at that point and there seems to be some type of regenerative feedback from the wire. I have not explored this to my satisfaction, but it is worthy of further study. Perhaps it will verify your theory.
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