The end of the OLTC2 story

After the drive electronics were destroyed at Derby, I didn't have any motivation to fix them, since I thought I had taken OLTC technology as far as it could reasonably go. I dismantled the OLTC2 with the intention of using the parts for my Odin The All-Fragger DRSSTC. Unfortunately the secondary got dropped and badly damaged, and since I moved house, I don't really have anywhere to build Odin anyway. So basically the OLTC2 is dead.

It's not all bad news though. The OLTC2 design (with a lot of secret tweaks) formed the basis for an artificial lightning show at a Danish science park that I developed with Finn Hammer. I recently saw another hobbyist build an even bigger OLTC using my driver design, and I like to think that the work I did on large IGBTs might have helped Steve and Jimmy with their DRSSTCs too.

Finally, things recently came full circle when Terry Fritz brought out his new SiSG. He basically took an OLTC, modified it to work with a series stack of IGBTs, and put back the iron cored HV transformer that we all busted our brains trying to get rid of.

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