That solder shunt is fricking brilliant ! If any of my devices had this type of gdt it would've saved me a major headache in a recent event - I'm renting a living unit that's part of the landlords' house, my breaker box is fed by their main box - i was away, they called saying that something trips the main rcd.. I got back to my apartment, an electrician was in the middle of trying to figure out what's going on, i went in, disconnected everything and the short was gone - later i found 3×power supplies, a fly zapper and 2×phone chargers fried, plus my UPS's battery broke (leak from the terminals resin seal). Every fried unit had evidence to either constant over voltage or close repeated surges (MOV o/h, quality electrolytics exploded so rapidly there was electrolyte dripping from the chargers' casings! Fuses gone but rectifiers unharmed, so over 450v for the caps but less than 1000 for the rectifiers) what i figured out later is that their pool pump broke and started to trip either the gfci/rcd, my guess is that everytime it produced a spike that hit mostly my apartment (i might have an ideas on why). So when the electrician tried to find the problem - with every test my apartment got blasted until devices started to short.. But eventually the shorted MOVs and caps also kills the fuses.. So.. If i took any longer to get back he would have continued to fry every single device i had connected to an outlet !😡 If even one device had this GDT it might've shorted in a manner that puts less stress on fuses while reliably tripping the GFCI (if suppressed to gnd) Eventually i managed to fix everything except for one of the samsung chargers that had it's main chip not scorched but annoyingly just blew off a crater where the marking was 😅👌
A clever idea having a spring loaded shunt held out of contact with a blob of solder - A constant over-voltage is shorted by the shunt instead of relying only on the gas.
These are one of the critical parts in a serious surge protector or an EMP protector. These clamp the very high current bit of a surge impulse. Typically you would have a breaker, a GDT, a MOV stack, a common mode rejection choke, a small capacitor a fuse and a bilateral avalance diode. If a surge makes it through all that then you house is going up in flames because you just took a direct lightning strike to the mains 💀
@@Biokemist-o3kdigi key and mouser sell them, EBay has them but no guarantees whether eBay ones will be operating and within the specifications they say. I’ve had decent luck with eBay. They’re anywhere between 5 USD and 0.50 USD depending on which model and rating you get etc. I’ve also seen them on telecommunications boards (say, the ones controlling all of the phones in a hotel or something) so if one of those pieces of equipment breaks down or gets thrown away you might even get these for free lol.
I have a few hundred CG2 350L's and was thinking of adding them to every wall-plug and light in the house. I seen somewhere I would need an inductor and a thing that looks like 2 diodes in the circuit. Do you know anything about this? Thanks. I just realised this was posted 4 years ago. Oh well.
Looks like the GDTs you have are design for DC voltage and not AC voltage. I'm not entirely sure if you can safely use those for your application, I usually see MOVs instead of GDTs as the first element of surge suppression, follow by thermal fuses. The biggest issue here is that making one is not impossible, but you need to figure it out a way to make sure the surge suppression circuit that you make has a way to show if it is still working properly (commercial AC power surges come with and LED that indicates if the power surge is still working) and also, you need to figure it out the load to determine the amount of Joules you need to design your circuit for.
For this particular setup, I applied a constant voltage across the terminals (+24 VDC) which keeps the GDT firing after a voltage surge is applied. Because it has a failsafe, it prevents the GDT for burning, but a GDT without failsafe will burn eventually (in a matter of seconds). Unfortunately, for the setup and equipment I use, I can only determine that by keeping an eye on the GDT after each hit (I'm not sure if these kind of information is provided in the manufacturer's datasheet.
Thanks for the response..... you mean + 24 VDC is used as a triggering .. I mean is it the DC breakdown voltage of the particular GDT...? I'm also testing few gas tubes these days... and I kept on giving consecutive 10KV shots .. but what it does is release half of it to the load while partially absorbing surge energy.. I need to find at what point the GDT completely destroys.... it seems they are not dying easily.. instead show partial protection characteristics ......!
The actual trigger point for this setup is +500VDC, but the +24VDC keeps the GDT on until it activates the failsafe (otherwise, the GDT will burn in seconds). You're second assumption is correct, this device provides partial protection, the datasheets of the GDTs will tell you how much voltage is still passing thru and you need to add extra surge protection for this (I seen voltages as high as +/-750VDC after the GDT) usually this is managed with a protection circuit consisting of inductors and high voltage diodes that will take care of the residual voltage after the GDT.
Hi my friend, I made 2 arrester plugs and I used a dual gas spark gap arrester and a varistor as well as in this scheme Https://@t Initially nothing happened, but then sometimes during the day the differential or the thermal magnetic circuit breaker of the line taken trips. I don't understand why after hours and hours that nothing happens, sometimes the differential intervenes, sometimes the magnetothermic instead: when asked, the amateur designer told me that the spark gaps are very sensitive. I understand the sensitivity, but finding the disconnected current in the absence is not so beautiful, especially for the refrigerator. What do you think about it? Is it possible to solve the problem? Could it be that I have to install them upstream of the differential and the thermal magnetic circuit breaker?
@@maxastuto I'm not a big fan of MOVs, and since you are using a GDT already, that should take place instead of the MOV. I will suggest a couple of big inductors in series with the GDT before the location of the MOV (1 inductor on each line, maybe 15uH, high current) and add after a couple of TVS diodes and a capacitor in parallel to suppress the remaining voltage that the GDT was unnable to prevent.
@@DCSVER ok This is the pdf link of the double spark distributor : iu8cri.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/t23_a350x_x7200-525953.pdf and this is the pdf link of the varistore : iu8cri.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/SIOV_Leaded_StandarD.pdf
That solder shunt is fricking brilliant !
If any of my devices had this type of gdt it would've saved me a major headache in a recent event - I'm renting a living unit that's part of the landlords' house, my breaker box is fed by their main box - i was away, they called saying that something trips the main rcd.. I got back to my apartment, an electrician was in the middle of trying to figure out what's going on, i went in, disconnected everything and the short was gone - later i found 3×power supplies, a fly zapper and 2×phone chargers fried, plus my UPS's battery broke (leak from the terminals resin seal).
Every fried unit had evidence to either constant over voltage or close repeated surges (MOV o/h, quality electrolytics exploded so rapidly there was electrolyte dripping from the chargers' casings! Fuses gone but rectifiers unharmed, so over 450v for the caps but less than 1000 for the rectifiers)
what i figured out later is that their pool pump broke and started to trip either the gfci/rcd, my guess is that everytime it produced a spike that hit mostly my apartment (i might have an ideas on why).
So when the electrician tried to find the problem - with every test my apartment got blasted until devices started to short.. But eventually the shorted MOVs and caps also kills the fuses.. So.. If i took any longer to get back he would have continued to fry every single device i had connected to an outlet !😡
If even one device had this GDT it might've shorted in a manner that puts less stress on fuses while reliably tripping the GFCI (if suppressed to gnd)
Eventually i managed to fix everything except for one of the samsung chargers that had it's main chip not scorched but annoyingly just blew off a crater where the marking was 😅👌
Yup that is the best way to wire them for sensitive applications. Use the middle pin to trip a CCFI. Those GDTs can take extremely high currents too.
A clever idea having a spring loaded shunt held out of contact with a blob of solder - A constant over-voltage is shorted by the shunt instead of relying only on the gas.
Indeed! It damages the device, but in a safe way.
These are one of the critical parts in a serious surge protector or an EMP protector. These clamp the very high current bit of a surge impulse. Typically you would have a breaker, a GDT, a MOV stack, a common mode rejection choke, a small capacitor a fuse and a bilateral avalance diode. If a surge makes it through all that then you house is going up in flames because you just took a direct lightning strike to the mains 💀
Where can I find a three terminal GDT like that one?
@@Biokemist-o3kdigi key and mouser sell them, EBay has them but no guarantees whether eBay ones will be operating and within the specifications they say. I’ve had decent luck with eBay.
They’re anywhere between 5 USD and 0.50 USD depending on which model and rating you get etc.
I’ve also seen them on telecommunications boards (say, the ones controlling all of the phones in a hotel or something) so if one of those pieces of equipment breaks down or gets thrown away you might even get these for free lol.
I have a few hundred CG2 350L's and was thinking of adding them to every wall-plug and light in the house. I seen somewhere I would need an inductor and a thing that looks like 2 diodes in the circuit. Do you know anything about this? Thanks. I just realised this was posted 4 years ago. Oh well.
Looks like the GDTs you have are design for DC voltage and not AC voltage. I'm not entirely sure if you can safely use those for your application, I usually see MOVs instead of GDTs as the first element of surge suppression, follow by thermal fuses. The biggest issue here is that making one is not impossible, but you need to figure it out a way to make sure the surge suppression circuit that you make has a way to show if it is still working properly (commercial AC power surges come with and LED that indicates if the power surge is still working) and also, you need to figure it out the load to determine the amount of Joules you need to design your circuit for.
Wow! Beautiful! =)
Thanks for posting this.
Hello ... How can we determine the point of death after hitting a GDT with consecutive surges of high voltage ....?
For this particular setup, I applied a constant voltage across the terminals (+24 VDC) which keeps the GDT firing after a voltage surge is applied. Because it has a failsafe, it prevents the GDT for burning, but a GDT without failsafe will burn eventually (in a matter of seconds).
Unfortunately, for the setup and equipment I use, I can only determine that by keeping an eye on the GDT after each hit (I'm not sure if these kind of information is provided in the manufacturer's datasheet.
Thanks for the response..... you mean + 24 VDC is used as a triggering .. I mean is it the DC breakdown voltage of the particular GDT...? I'm also testing few gas tubes these days... and I kept on giving consecutive 10KV shots .. but what it does is release half of it to the load while partially absorbing surge energy.. I need to find at what point the GDT completely destroys.... it seems they are not dying easily.. instead show partial protection characteristics ......!
The actual trigger point for this setup is +500VDC, but the +24VDC keeps the GDT on until it activates the failsafe (otherwise, the GDT will burn in seconds).
You're second assumption is correct, this device provides partial protection, the datasheets of the GDTs will tell you how much voltage is still passing thru and you need to add extra surge protection for this (I seen voltages as high as +/-750VDC after the GDT) usually this is managed with a protection circuit consisting of inductors and high voltage diodes that will take care of the residual voltage after the GDT.
Hi my friend, I made 2 arrester plugs and I used a dual gas spark gap arrester and a varistor as well as in this scheme
Https://@t
Initially nothing happened, but then sometimes during the day the differential or the thermal magnetic circuit breaker of the line taken trips. I don't understand why after hours and hours that nothing happens, sometimes the differential intervenes, sometimes the magnetothermic instead: when asked, the amateur designer told me that the spark gaps are very sensitive. I understand the sensitivity, but finding the disconnected current in the absence is not so beautiful, especially for the refrigerator. What do you think about it? Is it possible to solve the problem? Could it be that I have to install them upstream of the differential and the thermal magnetic circuit breaker?
Can you send me the schematic for your circuit?
@@DCSVER ok yes the schematic is on this link : iu8cri.altervista.org/costruzione-semplice-protezione-sovratensione-tipo-3-spina/
@@maxastuto I'm not a big fan of MOVs, and since you are using a GDT already, that should take place instead of the MOV. I will suggest a couple of big inductors in series with the GDT before the location of the MOV (1 inductor on each line, maybe 15uH, high current) and add after a couple of TVS diodes and a capacitor in parallel to suppress the remaining voltage that the GDT was unnable to prevent.
@@DCSVER ok can you make a wiring diagram? my email is maxastuto@libero.it thanks
@@DCSVER ok This is the pdf link of the double spark distributor : iu8cri.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/t23_a350x_x7200-525953.pdf
and this is the pdf link of the varistore : iu8cri.altervista.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/SIOV_Leaded_StandarD.pdf