design note · Voltage Intensifier Circuit · computed
VIC design session v10: reasoning
Lab note, 2026-07-03: Reran the choke sweep to see if AWG16-17 at fixed 140t plus fine L retune could squeeze more Q out before I hit the wall I suspected — and it's a wall. Every top-5 candidate converged on the same cell geometry (22.8mm rod / 29.5mm tube, C=1.29nF, water R=88.9kΩ) and identical electrical operating point: f_r=99.08kHz, Xl=Xc=1245Ω. Turns count from 130-150 barely moves tank Q (67.1 down to 66.4) even though coil Q swings hard (1090→945) — confirms tank Q is capped by the transformed water resistance, not by wire loss. Coil Q is already >>tank Q at every turns count, so we're deep in the regime where the water's series-equivalent resistance is the dominant loss term. AWG gauge and turns are second-order levers here; I didn't even need to test AWG16/17 explicitly, the retune trend makes clear more copper won't break the plateau.
Adopting #1: 130t, AWG18, 805V output (×67.1), 646mA — best voltage and Q of the set, current still comfortably under 1A, wire length shortest of the bunch (less resistive loss, cheaper build). Marginal gains beyond 130t aren't worth the extra winding length.
Next session: stop sweeping wire/turns on this geometry — go back to the C/water-R proxy itself. Vary rod/tube gap and electrode length to lower water-transformed R directly, since that's the real ceiling on Q per today's data.
Basis
- Confidence
- 0.70
- Recorded
- Published
- 30 Aug 2026
- Device
- Voltage Intensifier Circuit
- Component
- choke
- Source Ref
- design session v10
- Notebook Id
- 1342
design-loop