A
Anonymous
Guest
Hi All,
Below is a repost of an article I did a while back on my Tech forum.
"There are many factors that influence the design of a PI coil. However, let's decide on two starting parameters i.e. 100uS pulse width and 2kHz pulse rate. One very important factor is what the earliest sampling time is required to be, as this does have a major effect on the maximum useable coil inductance. The greater the inductance and the higher the current, the longer it takes to reduce the field to zero and the later the sample delay has to be. If you are designing a detector for beach and shallow water hunting a good minimum sample delay to aim for is 15uS. With the right components in the transmitter circuit you can then use a coil inductance of 300uH. I have found it best to wind the coil with 10/0.1 PVC insulated stranded wire (10 strand, 0.1mm strand diameter) as this minimises eddy currents generated in the wire cross section. For a 10in coil the winding resistance is about 4 ohms and with an additional 4.7 ohm 4W resistor in series (in the drive circuit) gives a coil time constant (L/R) of about 30uS. For a 100uS TX pulse width (3.3 times the coil TC) the current will have reached over 95% of its maximum value at switch off, which is a satisfactory situation.
Another important factor to decide at the outset is the type of battery and the required battery life. At 2kHz the current consumption with the above values will be about 250mA at 12V which really requires the use of 10 C cells as a minimum. You can of course design for less current and smaller batteries by using a shorter TX pulse, a higher inductance coil with higher series resistance but there will be some performance trade off. Some PI detectors, particularly earlier designs, do not use a series resistor in the coil circuit to limit the current. Is this case the pulse current is often limited by the coil inductance i.e. the current is switched off well before it has reached its final value which would be determined by the coil resistance. Alternatively, the pulse repetition rate can be lowered until the current is of an acceptable value. There are disadvantages to both of these techniques:- Inductance limiting results in the magnetic field still changing rapidly in a positive direction at the point of switch off. This can cause some signal loss due to switch on eddy currents cancelling those generated at switch off. In pulse frequency limiting, the response time and noise averaging of the detector may not be as good.
The shunt, or damping, resistor, will be determined by the resonant frequency of the coil plus stray and cable capacitance. Not being able to display formulae yet (hope to soon as scanner arrives on Monday) you could look up in a radio or electronic text book the formula for a critical damping resistor for an LC with a given resonant frequency. Or you could just try it experimentally. Start with 1k ohms and look at the receiver output on a scope. The receiver (again it depends what front end I.C. you use) should recover cleanly with no ringing before the point of sampling. Add more resistors in parallel until this is achieved. You should end up with maybe 500 ohms across the coil as described above. Use a good quality 0.5W metal film as the peak emf at switch off can reach several hundred volts and I have found that smaller wattage carbon film resistors can break down and go noisy. I have tried a cermet preset in series with a fixed resistor to give an easily variable adjustment but again the high voltage can cause burning at the wiper contact and eventual failure.
Eric.
Below is a repost of an article I did a while back on my Tech forum.
"There are many factors that influence the design of a PI coil. However, let's decide on two starting parameters i.e. 100uS pulse width and 2kHz pulse rate. One very important factor is what the earliest sampling time is required to be, as this does have a major effect on the maximum useable coil inductance. The greater the inductance and the higher the current, the longer it takes to reduce the field to zero and the later the sample delay has to be. If you are designing a detector for beach and shallow water hunting a good minimum sample delay to aim for is 15uS. With the right components in the transmitter circuit you can then use a coil inductance of 300uH. I have found it best to wind the coil with 10/0.1 PVC insulated stranded wire (10 strand, 0.1mm strand diameter) as this minimises eddy currents generated in the wire cross section. For a 10in coil the winding resistance is about 4 ohms and with an additional 4.7 ohm 4W resistor in series (in the drive circuit) gives a coil time constant (L/R) of about 30uS. For a 100uS TX pulse width (3.3 times the coil TC) the current will have reached over 95% of its maximum value at switch off, which is a satisfactory situation.
Another important factor to decide at the outset is the type of battery and the required battery life. At 2kHz the current consumption with the above values will be about 250mA at 12V which really requires the use of 10 C cells as a minimum. You can of course design for less current and smaller batteries by using a shorter TX pulse, a higher inductance coil with higher series resistance but there will be some performance trade off. Some PI detectors, particularly earlier designs, do not use a series resistor in the coil circuit to limit the current. Is this case the pulse current is often limited by the coil inductance i.e. the current is switched off well before it has reached its final value which would be determined by the coil resistance. Alternatively, the pulse repetition rate can be lowered until the current is of an acceptable value. There are disadvantages to both of these techniques:- Inductance limiting results in the magnetic field still changing rapidly in a positive direction at the point of switch off. This can cause some signal loss due to switch on eddy currents cancelling those generated at switch off. In pulse frequency limiting, the response time and noise averaging of the detector may not be as good.
The shunt, or damping, resistor, will be determined by the resonant frequency of the coil plus stray and cable capacitance. Not being able to display formulae yet (hope to soon as scanner arrives on Monday) you could look up in a radio or electronic text book the formula for a critical damping resistor for an LC with a given resonant frequency. Or you could just try it experimentally. Start with 1k ohms and look at the receiver output on a scope. The receiver (again it depends what front end I.C. you use) should recover cleanly with no ringing before the point of sampling. Add more resistors in parallel until this is achieved. You should end up with maybe 500 ohms across the coil as described above. Use a good quality 0.5W metal film as the peak emf at switch off can reach several hundred volts and I have found that smaller wattage carbon film resistors can break down and go noisy. I have tried a cermet preset in series with a fixed resistor to give an easily variable adjustment but again the high voltage can cause burning at the wiper contact and eventual failure.
Eric.