On Thu, Feb 13, 2003 at 09:45:24AM -0800, Declan. Moriarty wrote:

> I had backed out of this one, but now feel like getting back in. A triac is 
> an A.C. device, with two scrs back to back. Why is it  suggested as a
> crowbar?  Probably in case you had an A.C wall wart. Personally, I think
> it's not the way to go at all. The idea with a triac is that you control
> A.C. I would use an SCR if you have to have a crowbar. I would never try

A Triac is a bidirectional version of a SCR. The SCR is conducting only in one
direction, the Triac in both (to protect from reverse voltage). 
In fact I modified a simple SCR crowbar with a Triac to get the reverse
voltage protection.

> to fire one with simply a zener. Gates get sensitive in the heat ...

My Triac needs some 10 mA to get fired. With heat I have some uA in the
zener ... but you can add some resistors (see link below).

I used google.com with "triac crowbar" and got a Powerpoint presentation,
(the first link). There is a page with a "Triac crowbar". Instead of my zener
it uses a DIAC and R-network (to cut out voltage spikes above 120 V).
It is very similar to my solution.
(you can download a powerpoint viewer from microsoft)

The using of a SCR as a crowbar is described here (in german):
http://www.e-online.de/public/schaerer/crowbar.htm
Maybe googles translator can help you to understand it:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.e-online.de%2Fpublic%2Fschaerer%2Fcrowbar.htm&langpair=de%7Cen&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools

        Matthias
-- 
Author: Matthias Weingart
  INET: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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