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From the Puckerbrush...

Editor's Column

Building a Glow Plug Driver

Here's a very simple electronic project that anyone with a glow engine could use - a glow plug driver that can be added to a small flight box that lacks one, or to replace a broken driver on an existing flight box. The parts can be bought cheaply from almost any electronics store. Furthermore, no printed circuit board is necessary; just solder the parts together. The beauty of this design is its simplicity.

Parts required:

  figure46
Figure 1: Labels for the three pins on the LM350 voltage regulator. The LM350 comes in two different-looking flavors.

When constructing, screw the voltage regulator to a heatsink, usually a piece of aluminum. Figure 1 shows the two flavors of LM350's and what each of its three pins corresponds to in the circuit diagram. There are three connections on the potentiometer; we need only two of them. Use the middle connection and one of the outer ones. Adjust the potentiometer until you get a suitable voltage to drive your glow plug. You can get up to 2.2 volts, so be careful you don't drive your plugs too hard.

  figure50
Figure 2: Circuit diagram for the glow plug driver.



Craig Kulesa
Fri Dec 1 16:47:49 MST 2000