Gray Conversion Tube System Plans

[Guest]

voltage difficulties

I've been going about troubleshooting the lack of voltage buildup in
the HV-side capacitors, and it seems to stem from not having a path
to the Negative Battery Post. Simply setting up a spark gap onto Ground
is not the answer it seems, it must be connected through the (-)Battery,
and of course grounded as well. I have not yet tried this particular
scenario in practice, although just by using the NEG multimeter lead I
can see the difference in voltage potential between using one and the
other.

edit: I'll be testing the Ground socket in the future to avoid such problems.
While it may look and feel to be connected, I am thinking that it wasn't.

[Guest]

troubleshooting

Low and behold, the Ground was indeed connected, although while it will
draw 120VAC it will not with 12VDC from a battery. I have grounded the
negative battery terminal and constructed my HV spark gap connected to
it. The capacitors are charging up like they are supposed to.

The low voltage side cap is getting up to around 90V; the reverse leakage
through the LV-side diodes while blocking the HV signal is around 500mV, and
the HV caps are getting up around 1100. I've checked every diode to ensure
that nothing has blown out, and unfortunately there is still no radiant
discharge when manually tapping the LV-side commutator.

I am unsure as to what is going wrong. When connecting the LV signal onto
the series of diodes, there is a momentary increase of the HV-side capacitor
spark gap energy and nothing more. The conversion tube electrodes are nearly
touching, they are very close...



HV Side


LV 1000V 1A Diodes


12V Booster