Introduction

[01.30.2008]

The ESD gun we plan on designing will use a portable power supply. This will be connected to the ESD gun via a high voltage line. Upon pressing a button located on the gun, the unit will charge a high voltage capacitor to approximately 2KV in roughly 3 seconds. After the capacitor has been fully charged an LED will light up on the gun. This light will let the user know that the capacitor is charged and is ready to discharge. The user then will move the gun into proximity of the circuit and the gun will discharge a 2KV pulse in 5-10ns. At this point the user can press the button again and the gun will recharge itself back to the same voltage. The discharge network will be designed such that it acts like the human body model. The gun will discharge a pulse that resembles HBM simulated in PSpice.

Project Change

[02.28.2008]

Our project just recently got changed to improve our design. We will now allow the user to select via a push button from a 3kV, 4kV, 5kV discharge voltage. LEDs will be used to indicate which voltage the user is on to ensure they know which one they will be discharging. There may be some power issues with our battery but most likely will be fixed later on completing our design.

Discharge Network update

[04.08.2008]

We are now nearing the end of our project and everything is falling right into place. The capacitor has been developed and our discharge network is finished. Our gun casing just needs to be picked up by Namruth and insulation needs to come in from shipping. Once these two elements are in place then we will have a complete gun. Soon the power supply will deliver the voltage needed to complete our ESD Gun.

Power Supply update

[04.13.2008]

The power supply has not come without any problems but with everything completely ironed out we have a finished design. The next steps are to complete our design by incasing and insulating everything for safety reasons. We must now design our box along with our PCB layout for the power supply then it will be complete.

Project update

[04.24.2008]

Design Day is tomorrow and we will be presenting at 8:25 am at the MSU Union. The housing is complete and the vector board for the power supply is also. The PCB board did not work out due to transient problems with our DC boost chip. The ESD gun was tested yesterday at the BOSCH plant in Plymouth MI. Everything worked as expected and our facilitator was very pleased. We just now have to present our work to the judges tomorrow. Pictures can now be seen in the Documents/Photos page so enjoy them.