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Interesting spark gap application
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Kenyan_guy:
I did a tear down on a power analyzer and I noticed the following design. The right of the circuit is conected to a flyback switching converter for AC-DC conversion.

Interestingly, I noticed the attached image(sparkgap.jpg) which seems to be a sparkgap in parallel with an RL parallel circuit of values 220R and 4.7uH. The reversed schematic is in design.png.

The question: Is this a common design pattern to place the sparkgap along the line and what could be the purpose of doing this?
T3sl4co1l:
Yes, this is also often seen on common mode chokes (these are normal mode chokes, for filtering line noise it would seem).  It's probably done to improve reliability during ESD testing -- if the inductor's insulation breaks down when zapped, it will tend to fail shorted.

Tim
PartialDischarge:
What power analyzer is that? and could you post a quick teardown with pictures?
vk6zgo:
That's not an interesting spark-gap-design.
This is an interesting spark-gap-design! ;D
http://vintagehamstation.com/images/n4ggspark7.jpg
coppercone2:
I was always interested in big multi conductor common mode spark gaps, as far as interesting goes. Imagine matching a big spark gap to a entire bus.

But the application is extremely interesting, because I ran into a chicken and egg protection problem (do you want the filter taking the edge off for the MOVs and stuff? is the x2 cap stronger? how does that inductor fare? etc).
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