Perhaps not the best way, but defiantly a pretty easy way!! Great video!

Your ZVS driver didn't work, probably because the gates of your MOSFETs are connected. The heat sinks are internally connected to the gate, and if you want to use a single heat sink for both, you need a high temperature plastic electrical insulator to transfer the heat but not the electricity. They make them specifically for this purpose, or I suppose you could try improvising with scotch tape.

That's pretty nice output!

weekend project is so on. I burned up my first CFL board last night. we had alot of fun though. thank you for your findings.

Those circuits in cfl's are ballasts, they are the same as the bigger ones, the bigger ones can more than double the output of a small cfl ballast, and take alot longer to burn out.

The reason the ZVS driver failed was prubably due to long woreds going everywhere. The tank capacitor should be connected as close to the flycanck primary as possible, and the wiring between comunents must be as short ass possible to reduce stray capacitance and indictance. Aso I found that 12V 1W zener diodes burn out easly, so if you can, double up on them in parralel to double up on the current handling.

It worked very well for dc flyback as well, I got up to 2 inch arcs on mine. Also, what is the specs off that ballast, mine burned out awhile ago, and I want to get the same one

what if i have one of these where you have heating for the filament is there a way to use it

great output

thanks for the vid,good and helpful. I was wondering if the output can be used for electro static plates for ebner effect experiments on plants or will that just make a homemade popcorn maker.

Cool! Thanks for the info I hope it works

Thanks. Exactly what I was looking for.

I was wondering about those old utility mount ballasts. I assumed they were just a momentary HV ignition which then feeds 60 Hz line voltage and that it was simply current limited 120 via the ballast afterwards. I like ZVS but I have LOTS of flybacks and projects so the ballast tricks are just too convenient to skip. Too bad they are going rapidly extinct along with the flybacks.

Great Video. Thanks

Very cool! Is that the newer electronic kind of ballast?

how many watts that ballast consumes?

sorry about the shaky video :/

whats the wattage of the ballast?

whats the wattage of the starter?

I tried that with a smaller ballast. It gave much smaller but hot arcs. The arcs very only half a centimeter...