DIY Induction Heater

 

We have featured DIY Induction Heaters here before. There is something about heating a big chunk of metal with no contact that is so appealing. Uzzors2k has a great write-up about his experiments with his Induction Heater, it is filled with trial and error which we can all learn from. 

"To test my new driver I had a large work coil and tank capacitor already built for a previous induction heater project. The tank capacitor was made up of 50x 22nF and 50x 12nF mini capacitors I purchased cheaply off ebay, giving a total of 1.7µF at 600V. So far I’ve had 3 capacitor failures, all of them with the small 12nF ones. Other than that the bank has held up well and doesn’t seem very lossy. The most difficult component to construct was the matching inductor, which dissipates surprising amounts of power due to the large current flow. After a few failed attempts I had to use 32 strands of 0.3mm magnet wire, wrapped together as litz wire. Even with just 8.6 milli-Ohms of DC resistance I still had to use a fan to keep the inductor temperature low enough."