Step Up Voltage from Disposable Camera Flash

[Muteibanez]

http://science.howstuffworks.com/camera-flash2.htm

check out the schematics for a basic flash of a disposable camera, i am new to this part of physics, i just learned about DC. Anyway can someone give me #'s that might work with this circuit to achieve a step up voltage? Also are the "coil's" just coiled wires?

 

[dlgoff]

...Anyway can someone give me #'s that might work with this circuit to achieve a step up voltage? Also are the "coil's" just coiled wires?

It's a simple circuit but instead of building one, I would just buy a throw-away camera and remove the circuit.

 

[Cliff_J]

Those aren't mere coils. That's two separate coils that are wound on one common core, thus creating a transformer.

When you feed AC into a transformer, the one coil (called the primary) turns the electricity into magenetics which flows along the core to the other coil (called the secondary) where it comes back out as electricity. However, during that transformation you can change voltage and amperage much like a car transmission changes torque and rpm. The power (volts times amps = watts) stays the same excepting for losses, but you get a ratio effect. So neglecting losses, let's say you have 12V AC signal with 2A of current going into a transformer with a ratio of 2. Coming out the other side could be either 24V AC with 1A of current OR you could have 6V AC with 4A or current depending on which way you wire the transformer.

We have a DC battery, but can switch it on/off to make something that resembles AC and it works on the tranformer to step up the voltage (and stepping down current at the same time). This switching could be done with a simple 555 timer and transistor, but it doesn't sound like you're quite at that stage.

Simplist circuit would be something like a $10 strobe kit I've seen that can charge a capacitor to 120V.

Cliff

P.S. You might want to read around their site a little more too, they explain the circuit in more detail than would be feasible to type up here.