Test board almost ready

The simulator test board is now mostly complete. The Freescale ECU requires the software to be written and the wiring could be tidied up. The motor controller which drives the spin bench also operates at a particular frequency which produces a sharp whine. The frequency could be changed to take this out of audible frequency and make testing more tolerable.

Sparking

Today we tried out the coil and rudimentary ignitor on the test board. With a frequency generator we were able to successfully generate a spark across our large gapped plug. Unfortunately when i decided to increase the frequency the ballast resistors in series with the transistors overheated and burnt out. Now we at least know the coil and spark plug work. A new ignitor needs to be made with a better electronic switch. Currently two TIP120s in parallel are used with ballast resistors to prevent current favouring one transistor over the other, which is definitely not ideal. A design featuring an IGBT or similar will eliminate the second transistor and ballast resistor and be able to handle the EMF spikes much better.