Summary

If you've ever wondered why relays need flyback diodes, how ignition coils generate 30,000 volts, or why injector dead time exists, the answer starts with understanding one simple component: the inductor. In this webinar, we'll show you what inductors are and how they're used in automotive electronics.

00:00 Hey everyone, welcome to today's webinar.
00:02 I'm Caleb here at High Performance Academy.
00:04 It's really good to have you along here.
00:06 Today we're going to talk about inductors, why they're important.
00:09 They're actually one of the most important components in our electrical system on an engine.
00:14 And we might not even know much about them as far as being an inductor.
00:17 So, today I'll try and clear some of those things up for you.
00:20 Before I get into it, remember this is a live webinar.
00:23 So, if you're watching along with us today, I'd really appreciate it.
00:26 Behave yourselves and stick around to the end for a Q&A.
00:30 You can get some questions answered by me at the end.
00:33 If you're not watching live, this is recorded and you can watch at any time.
00:37 If you're watching live and need to step away, you can watch once this is recorded and put up into our archives to watch at any point, anytime you want, even to go back and re-look at some things.
00:48 Today's topic will be pretty in-depth.
00:50 I'm going to try and simplify some things as much as possible.
00:54 But yeah, it might be something you want to delve into a bit deeper with some Google searches and that sort of thing.
00:59 It's a really important topic in inductance and inductors.
01:03 It's where some of our topics and what would I say, references to things like injector dead times, coil dwell periods and electromagnetic interference.
01:15 I often talk about in some of my webinars about interference from magnetic fields through wires.
01:22 And that's because I've said it a lot, when a current passes through a wire, it actually creates its own magnetic field.
01:29 And that's sort of the core to what we're going to be talking about today or what an inductor actually is.
01:36 So, to tell you what an inductor is, we'll start with the law that it's sort of built around and that is Faraday's law.
01:43 And I'll read it out exactly as it is.
01:46 So, it is said, Faraday's law of induction is a fundamental principle of electromagnetism, stating that a changing magnetic field inside a closed loop of wire induces an electromotive force or voltage.
02:00 So, to put that in simple terms, basically, when we move a magnetic field over a conductor like a wire, it induces a voltage.
02:09 And that's where we get things like our back voltage, back EMF, things like our interference into other wires.
02:16 And that's sort of why it is, so important.
02:18 And some of our key components that use this inductance and is why they're called inductors, things like I've got here on the table, which is our just common automotive relay, injectors for injecting fuel and our ignition coils.
02:33 So, some pretty important components on our engine.
02:37 And that's why we're going to talk about this today so, we can actually get our head around it, understand those things like injector dead times and coil dwell.
02:45 I think it's one of those things, people just read the data sheet and don't fully understand what is going on and why that is, so important.
02:52 So yeah, in basic terms, our inductors use that core law, Faraday's law, to create a magnetic field using electricity.
03:02 They send a current through a coil, creates a magnetic field, and each of these components uses that magnetic field, that stored energy in a magnetic field to do some sort of job on our engine.
03:14 So, I'll go through each one and talk about each one individually and how they do their different things, why it's important, what we need to sort of look out for.
03:22 Before that, let's talk about magnetism just in itself.
03:26 I think it's one of those things, people often just mix things up a little bit or it can be quite confusing.
03:31 I've actually got a little bit of a display here, which I'm hoping will go well on live TV.
03:36 It might not, but we've got a little baggie here.
03:39 I've collected some genuine HPA floor filings, metal filings.
03:45 I'll use a little bit of this, it will be for sale after.
03:47 That's a joke.
03:48 But we're gonna spread this out over this clear Perspex I've got, and I've got a magnet, and you should be able to get a clear image of what a magnetic field actually looks like.
03:58 So, to start off, I'm just gonna gently throw these out.
04:03 There's a good mix of different bits of metal in here, some bigger bits, because some people were groaning a lot of metal yesterday, Martin.
04:11 But we should get the effect that I want.
04:13 I'll just try and spread this out a little bit more.
04:18 And I've got a magnet on a magnet, just to make it a bit more obvious.
04:23 Hopefully, we can get this in our view.
04:26 If I pass this underneath.
04:28 Oh, that went too hard, because my whiteboard is magnetic.
04:32 But that actually gives me the effect that I want.
04:34 So, I'm just gonna lay this down so, I can point a few things out without the magnet actually there.
04:37 It might be kind of hard to see.
04:39 Immediately we saw a lot of the filings jump into the middle, right where the magnet was.
04:44 But if you can see, there is kind of these lines where our metal filings have collected and pointed in all in the same direction, back to where that magnet is.
04:54 And this is a indicator of our magnetic lines of flux, which is something you'll often hear when talking about magnetism, is the lines of flux.
05:03 And they're drawn in a particular way, which I think is actually kind of confusing.
05:07 That's why I wanted to show you like this.
05:09 The key thing to remember that I think gets confused a lot is a magnetic field isn't a moving thing.
05:16 It's a static field that is always there whenever the, sorry, when the magnetic components are static, things like your current or just the motion, everything is nice and still and static.
05:30 The magnetic field will be static.
05:31 There's no movement.
05:33 But often it's drawn when, I'll just try and draw this.
05:36 I've got magnetic files everywhere now.
05:38 So, let me just put this aside.
05:39 Hopefully, that's giving you a good idea.
05:42 This is going to get everywhere, kind of like glitter, but worse.
05:47 Anyway, so to kind of demonstrate it, we'll often see, particularly when talking about the magnetic field of a wire, you'll see like a cross section of a wire and then it'll be drawn, that you'll have a magnetic field of flux around like this.
06:04 And I'll often have a little arrow in there.
06:07 And it can kind of be misinterpreted that this field is actually moving or rotating in that line.
06:14 But that's not what this is actually indicating.
06:17 Those lines aren't indicating movement.
06:19 They're indicating the line of the flux, the direction.
06:22 So, when I showed you those metal filings, you could see that those filings were all pointed sort of in the same direction.
06:27 That magnetic field was pulling them in that same direction.
06:30 And that's what these lines are pointed towards.
06:32 And when we draw an actual magnet or a coil, say we have this as a coil, the magnetic field from that will actually be more like this.
06:42 It's probably one of the more common ones you'll see.
06:45 But they have all these lines radiating out and they'll have arrows pointing in a direction that they're going.
06:51 So, when our magnet, like the magnet that I have here on the end of a stick, it's a permanent magnet that doesn't change.
06:57 It's constantly static.
06:58 That magnetic field around that is going to be locked as it is.
07:02 And it's not actually going to change just sitting there.
07:04 And you saw that, oh, it's actually kind of hard to see, but when I just place this over the top, see if we get this to work again.
07:12 So, sitting still, none of these filings are moving currently.
07:15 There, some of them are pointing in the direction of those lines of flux, but it's all static and staying as is.
07:21 And that's just one thing I want you to keep in mind.
07:24 And it's important because the Faraday's law that said that we induce a voltage that only happens when we have motion or a moving magnetic field.
07:33 So, in order to induce this voltage into a conductor like a wire, we need this magnetic field to move.
07:39 And as I said, when everything's static, that isn't actually happening.
07:42 That's all staying as is.
07:44 So, the way we do that in an electrical system is we change the amount of current going through a device.
07:51 When we send like the core principle, when you send current down a wire, that creates this magnetic field.
07:57 We use that in things like our relays, coils, ignition coils, and injectors to create a magnetic field, a strong one, by looping these wires around and gathering that magnetic force together.
08:11 So, if you think, how am I gonna draw this? We have a loop of wire like this.
08:17 This is a very sprawled out coil.
08:20 Normally, your coils would be tightly packed, kind of like the drawings I've got here.
08:23 But that magnetic field is going around the same as this.
08:26 It's radiating out and it's collecting together.
08:29 And that's how we get this kind of image over here because they all collect together the more coils you have.
08:35 You'll often hear when talking about coils and maybe rewinding a coil that adding more coils can increase the magnetism, the strength, and it's essentially doing that.
08:45 Like you add another coil on, you're adding another section for more magnetism to be induced into that, sorry, radiated and create more magnetic field.
08:54 So, from this image, you get, if you looked in really close, you'd see little lines of flux basically around each coil, but they gather together into these bigger, larger radiating lines of flux.
09:07 And to make our magnetic field move and act in a way that causes this Faraday's law to induce a voltage, we need that magnetic field to move.
09:17 We need to either grow it or shrink it.
09:19 And we do that by varying the current that we send through our coil.
09:23 If we send a fixed current through, we'll get a fixed magnetic field and that'll stay as is.
09:29 When we shut that magnetic field, we, sorry, we stop that current, that magnetic field will collapse.
09:35 And just to touch on it now, when a magnetic field collapses and grows, we get a thing called impedance.
09:42 You often hear about this with injectors and you probably hear about it with things like coils, inductor coils.
09:48 It's an important part that is the, it's the part that plays with our injector dead times and coil dwell times.
09:55 So, keep that in your mind.
09:56 I'll try not to go too back and forth with this.
09:59 It's a bit hard to keep it all on track.
10:01 I do get sidetracked easily.
10:04 But going back to our core principle here, we want a moving magnetic force.
10:09 Don't think about it as a, I guess like a wind motion where they're, you know, flowing constantly.
10:15 It's, think of it as a growing field and a shrinking field.
10:19 Kind of like a shield around a spaceship.
10:23 You know, you see on TV, they grow and they've got that nice shield there.
10:26 Think of that as a constant current magnetic force.
10:30 So, and then when they lose their current, it collapses and shrinks.
10:34 Now, it's, there is a varying strength to this.
10:38 So, it doesn't have a cutoff like where these lines are.
10:41 That's not the end of the magnetic force.
10:44 It generally, it'll radiate and get weaker and weaker and weaker until it has no effect at all.
10:48 And that's why we get, with our magnetic filings there, some of them get drawn into the center.
10:53 We get some that sort of point.
10:54 And you might think, well, I saw those files get drawn in.
10:58 That's motion from the magnetic force.
11:00 But all that is, is basically those particular files were in the closer point of our magnetic field where it's really strong and those filings can't overcome that magnetic force.
11:13 The weight of gravity, the friction of the whiteboard or the perspex, sorry, couldn't stop that metal from being attracted to the magnetic force.
11:23 But those filings that we see on the outside, those little ones that just align themselves with the flux, they're in the weaker part of the field.
11:30 And, so they're not drawn to it, but they just stay and they actually align themselves to that flux because they are still in the magnetic field, but not to a point where it's overcoming the gravity and friction.
11:41 They all just kind of align.
11:43 And that's how we get that look at the flux field.
11:46 So, I'll often refer to it as a field of flux.
11:48 And that's basically just referring to this actual magnetic field.
11:52 And how it is behaving around a coil or whatever is creating that magnetic field.
11:58 An inductor, the actual inductor itself, what we're referring to, the devices that create this magnetic field using electricity and using a current through a coil in particular.
12:09 So, there are other devices like I've got a reluctor sensor here, reluctor speed sensor.
12:15 It works on the same principle, but it isn't generating its own magnetic field with electricity, has a permanent magnet.
12:22 So, a permanent field like my magnet on a stick here.
12:25 So, it's working in the same principles, that same Faraday's law, but it isn't an inductor itself.
12:30 So, I just wanted to mention that it is involved and there are similarities, they work on the same principles.
12:37 But for today, we're just gonna talk about inductors themselves.
12:42 Just wanna make sure I don't jump over anything too quickly.
12:47 We'll get into relays to start off with.
12:50 I think they're sort of the most basic and probably the easiest to get your head around how magnetism is used with an inductor.
12:57 So, I've got a simple drawing at the top here.
12:59 It's a bit of a mechanical layout of how the relay is inside.
13:03 So, we'll have the red here, which is our coil.
13:06 That's what's gonna create our magnetic field when we apply current.
13:09 We've got our two poles other side, our 87 and 30, our main contacts.
13:13 So, our switching contacts, the main contacts of the relay.
13:16 Things I wanna let you know is there's a spring on the outside here and our contact, soft bit of contact metal that is gonna move is at the top and not making contact.
13:28 That's a normally open relay.
13:30 There are other types of relays, of course, that are normally closed or dual switching.
13:36 This is just to show the inductor side of it to get that across.
13:40 So, there's many different ways that they do it.
13:42 This is just to get you an idea.
13:44 What we do, obviously our 86 and 85, they're our switching circuits of our relay.
13:50 When we apply a voltage and complete a circuit, so, we need a complete circuit for current to actually pass through.
13:56 When that circuit is complete and current passes through, we get the current going through all these coils.
14:02 We get that radiating flux here.
14:04 So, it's kind of like this, a magnetic field grows.
14:09 And like we saw the files, a magnetic piece of material like steel or whatever this material is made of will be pulled towards that strong magnetic force in the center.
14:21 It'll get to a point where it stops, the magnetic field stops growing.
14:25 It'll get to when it's reached its saturation point.
14:29 I'll go into that a bit more with coils.
14:30 That's a bit more important.
14:31 But basically with a certain amount of current, certain amount of voltage, it can only get, so strong.
14:36 And you get to a point where it overcomes the spring and that closes our contact and creates our close contact of our relay.
14:43 So, there is a point there where, the magnetic force might not be strong enough.
14:47 If we say, for example, have a 24 volt relay and we try and switch that with 12 volt, it might not actually switch at all.
14:55 We'll still have a magnetic force.
14:57 Those lines of flux, that field will still be there, but it won't be strong enough to pull that switch close.
15:02 The spring, the pressure that that spring is using to hold open the switch, the magnetic field won't be strong enough to pull that closed.
15:09 And that's sort of one of the important things to think about is, we can have a magnetic field with any kind of current, any passing current through a coil, but it depends on how strong it is and things like that, that will determine characteristics kind of like when something will switch.
15:24 That becomes really important for our things like injectors and ignition coils.
15:29 And that's because in those components, we're trying to switch things, switch these coils really fast and quite dramatically and at exact, precise moments.
15:39 And that's where we have a problem where this growth and shrinkage of our magnetic field is actually causing issues or things we have to keep in mind.
15:48 And one of the things we refer to with that is impedance.
15:52 And impedance, thinking about the name, it impedes something.
15:56 So, impedance is the impeding of the current that is passed through.
16:02 I'll try and go into that a bit more detail with the rest of these, I'm trying to gloss over too much.
16:07 But that should give you an idea of just the basics of a relay.
16:11 I'm just trying to work out whether I go into flyback diodes now or come back to that later.
16:17 I think I'll come back to that later or make more sense after I explain injectors and coils, I think.
16:22 So, moving on to injectors, we've got very much the same principle.
16:27 We have our coil inside.
16:29 Now, these are quick hand-drawn mechanical kind of layouts, might not be exactly how it is inside, just to kind of give you the idea.
16:35 We have a pintle on the inside or a needle that's closing off the injector, stopping fuel flowing.
16:41 And what we wanna do is power up this coil to create our magnetic flux, the field, which will end up radiating out like this from our coil.
16:51 And that is going to pull this core, there'll be a magnetic core inside, like iron, steel or something like that, that'll actually get attracted, pull into the center of that coil, open up, allow fuel to flow.
17:05 And it's very similar with our relay where our relay has a spring that's pulling it open or shut or normally closed.
17:12 We have a spring that's holding our pintle closed.
17:15 So, the coil needs enough current to create a magnetic force strong enough to pull that pintle open and overcome that spring.
17:24 So again, important if you're using, if you're trying to use the wrong voltage current levels for the wrong type of injector, it might not be able to overcome that spring and that's where we can have issues.
17:35 Also with that, it comes with some other issues because everything doesn't happen in an instant.
17:42 Things generally happen gradually or over a certain period of time.
17:46 With things like our injectors and coils, they happen very, very, very quickly.
17:51 You know, we can't really tell the difference by eye, but there are slight changes and things that happen gradually in terms of how quickly they are actually switching.
18:01 And that's where we get things like injector dead time.
18:05 So, to explain injector dead time simply, it's the point in time where when you initially switch an injector, there'll be a point where that magnetic field has to get strong enough to overcome the spring, overcome things like manifold pressure that's also holding, going against the pintle and, well, actually that's helping, sorry.
18:27 The injector fuel pressure on the other side of the pintle is holding it shut, so, it's gotta overcome that.
18:33 So, things don't happen instantly.
18:36 And I think I'll draw a bit of a graph thing here just to make it a little bit easier to understand.
18:41 So, impedance is what is sort of fighting back here and stopping things from happening instantly.
18:48 When we apply current to a magnetic field, a coil, impedance is resisting that change in current.
18:57 We apply current quite quickly.
19:00 We basically close a contact, we create a circuit and current tries to flow pretty much instantaneous.
19:07 And impedance in basic terms is the fight against that change.
19:13 It doesn't want current to change, so dramatically.
19:16 So, what it does is it basically induces its own voltage or its own current back against that change to kind of even things out.
19:27 So, if we have a look, if I was to draw a graph here, we want, so basically, and I was trying to think how, which way I do this, time down the bottom and current or do you have current that way? Anyway, current and time.
19:43 Soon as you initiate our coil, turn it on, we close the contacts, say we've got 12 volt and just say, for example, there's gonna be five amp, that's what we want to open our injector.
19:52 Soon as we put in that 12 volt, five amp, the coil itself, the inductor tries to fight back and push voltage back the other way.
20:00 And we essentially have a dead point where it's 12 volt versus 12 volt negative going the opposite way, but it's slowly being overcome.
20:09 It doesn't have its own energy to keep this up and it slowly gets less.
20:15 Our current is able to fight back going the way we want it.
20:18 So, it gradually builds up this current and gets to a point where we call saturation or our total current that we expect on that circuit.
20:26 And that's when our full magnetism, magnetic field strength is gonna be.
20:31 But obviously during this section here where we're gradually building up that current, it's not gonna be as strong.
20:38 Because as I said, the strength of the field, the flux field is directly proportionate to the amount of current being passed through.
20:45 So, we've got this sort of period in time where the coil itself is even fighting back the change of current and it's stopping itself from opening instantly.
20:55 And not only that with an injector, we have things like I said, the spring pressure, fuel pressure, everything's sort of fighting back against this instantaneous open of the injector.
21:05 And this all creates a brief moment in time where the injector can't open at all.
21:09 It needs to wait until it gets up to a point which might not be the total, the maximum amp saturation point.
21:17 It might be say around here, I'd say if we're using 5 amps, 4.5 amps, that's when the magnetic field is strong enough to overcome those particular criteria at that moment and open our injector.
21:30 So, that is our dead time between there and there.
21:33 Oh, sorry, going that way for time.
21:35 The injector can't actually physically open.
21:37 We don't have enough magnetic force and our injector is essentially dead.
21:42 It's not opening, not flowing fuel.
21:45 And that's a problem when we're trying to get a certain amount of fuel into a cylinder at a certain time.
21:50 And that's why our ECU really needs to know what these dead times are.
21:55 And you'll often see dead time tables as a variation in voltage and pressure, that sort of thing.
22:01 So, it's not just a simple one number is gonna be across the board.
22:05 Because as I said, changing the amount of voltage, changes amount of current, things like that, it's all gonna change how this curve kind of happens and when that pin tool is actually going to open.
22:15 So, it is very important that you have injectors that have good data on their dead times and how they actually work.
22:22 Because of that, so that the ECU knows that if it wants to open its injector for a certain amount of time, say it wants just for Pete's sake, a one millisecond flow, that's gonna have to be over here and it needs to add in this dead time so, that it gets a total injector pulse width that is going to open it for the length that you want, but also overcome that dead time.
22:47 Hopefully, that's made sense and I haven't glossed over anything too quickly.
22:52 That should kind of introduce why dead time is, so important with injectors.
22:57 It's one thing I've definitely seen in the past, working in workshops with tuners, people will come in with just random injectors they bought off a mate.
23:04 And when the tuner says, what's the information on these, do you have dead times? And they just say, no, it's just this part number.
23:09 That doesn't always help.
23:10 Sometimes companies will take a off the shelf injector, modify it in some way and change those characteristics.
23:18 So, it is really important to buy injectors from a reputable source that has this injector dead times and knows basically the characteristics of that injector.
23:31 I think that really goes over that nicely and we can move on to ignition coils.
23:36 So, remember all of these things are using that same inductance, the creation of a magnetic field using electricity to perform some sort of task.
23:45 So, with our relay, we're using it to close some contacts and create a separate circuit to the one we're using the switch.
23:53 This is because we want to switch something high current and our switching circuit can't cope with that like an ECU.
24:00 An injector, we want to physically open something.
24:03 We want to create motion, open up that injector and move that pintle out of the way so, that the fuel can flow.
24:10 With our ignition coil, we're doing something pretty drastically different but using the same principles.
24:18 We're changing our current voltage, which will most likely be 12 to 14 volts and converting that to thousands of volts.
24:25 This is where things kind of get interesting and it can be a little bit harder to understand but we'll do our best.
24:31 So, inside of a coil, you'll always hear being referred to a primary and secondary winding.
24:38 So, first we'll concentrate on the primary winding, which is the first winding that is connected to our ECU or whatever is triggering our coil.
24:48 So, that's essentially the same as our injector and relay.
24:52 We're just going to apply a current to it, complete the circuit and that's going to build a magnetic force around it.
24:59 So, we've got our coil here.
25:00 Now, just for reference, inside of a coil, the coils are generally packed differently, like inside of each other, that sort of thing.
25:07 I've just got them next to each other to make it a bit more obvious and make the drawing a bit easier.
25:11 But we have our primary on the left here and secondary on the right.
25:15 So, our primary is what's connected to our ECU.
25:17 It'll be connected to a 12 volt source in and then a trigger from our ECU.
25:23 And our ECU will turn that coil on, create the magnetic field and very much the same as our injector.
25:33 There is a period of time where our impedance is fighting back against that changing current, that rate of change.
25:40 So, it gradually grows until the point where it can't get any stronger because there's no more current.
25:47 It reaches the max point.
25:48 As I showed in the graph, it'll have a gradual growth until that max current and max field.
25:56 And that is in our injector coils, that is our saturation period.
26:00 So, if you think about saturation, it's getting to the point where you've got as much magnetic field out of it, you've pumped as much current passing through it and the coil, the impedance is no longer fighting back.
26:12 It's basically hit a saturated point where it can't get any bigger.
26:16 And ideally that's where we wanna get our coil to because that's gonna be creating the most powerful spark.
26:22 So, how do we actually create a spark from this magnetic field? So, we've reached that point where it's a constant magnetic field, it's strong, it's big.
26:31 But as I said at the beginning, thing that we really need to remember is when we wanna induce voltage into something else or a conductor, we need that magnetic field to move or change, that flux to change strength, grow or reduce.
26:45 So, when we initially turn that on and we have that slow growth in our current, that magnetic field is slowly growing.
26:53 And as it does that, it is passing over the wires in another coil or other components.
26:58 So, it will induce a slight voltage as that grows.
27:02 It won't be enough to induce the kind of voltage that creates a spark, mainly because in a spark plug reference, there is no actual circuit there to begin with.
27:12 But for things, that's where it's really important for things like noise.
27:15 If you had a wire running past, say your injector, every time that injector fires and that coil energizes and creates that field as that slow, it's not slow in relative to what's happening, but it's not an instantaneous thing.
27:29 It's slowly, keep saying slowly, it grows and as it grows, it's moving over our wire.
27:36 And that is where we get noise interference because that has induced a slight voltage into that wire.
27:41 So, the coil, we wanna do that, but we wanna induce thousands of volts.
27:45 We want it to really kick.
27:47 And if you've ever touched the end of a coil, it does kick.
27:50 We've got this field, it's open.
27:52 And I think one of the most confusing things that people sometimes don't realize is it's not actually when you turn a coil on or trigger it with your ECU that it fires, it is when you turn it off, you close a circuit, you're releasing the current from that coil, turning it off, cutting the circuit, that magnetic field is now there.
28:12 And as I said, impedance, it wants to resist the change of current.
28:16 So, you've gone from, as I mentioned before, putting current into it.
28:20 You wanna quickly change to a positive number in current.
28:25 It tries to resist that by going the opposite way and you have a slow increase in current.
28:29 Works the same in the opposite.
28:31 So, when you cut that current off completely, cut the circuit, the electrical field wants to keep that current going as much as it can.
28:40 So, when it collapses, or sorry, it will induce a voltage, which will then induce a current into that coil.
28:48 So, I've kind of mumbled over that a little bit.
28:50 As that field closes, it's going, it's moving, as we've explained with our Faraday's Law and that's the important part of inducing voltage.
28:59 As it collapses, it's inducing voltage basically onto anything around it.
29:04 Important thing to note here, I try not to gloss over, you can have a voltage in basically anything without there being current, without electrons moving, but it just means you have a potential for voltage.
29:18 Like a battery that's not connected, you have a potential for 12 volt.
29:21 As this field is collapsing, you're inducing a potential of voltage to pass current through.
29:28 Now, when you have a closed circuit, say if our coil was still connected, actually, this is probably better to explain in the relay.
29:35 I'm really sorry for jumping over here, but same thing happens with all these coils.
29:40 We get that movement of our magnetic flux.
29:43 With a coil, as it closes, it's inducing a voltage into our coil again.
29:48 So, as that closes, moves out over our coil windings, that's still a complete circuit back to our ECU.
29:54 So, those magnetic fields, that magnetic field is closing, and that's, sorry, what do they refer to as? I keep glossing over that word, collapse.
30:04 As the magnetic field collapses, that's what you'll hear mostly.
30:07 It will induce voltage onto these wires and that's where we have issues like back EMF and that's why we need things like flyback diodes because that voltage is actually being sent in the opposite way to what it came before because our magnetic field is trying to fight that changing current.
30:25 It wants to, you've sent power through with a certain amount of current, shut that off.
30:30 It's like, oh crap, I need that current still.
30:32 I want that to keep passing.
30:33 So, the magnetic field induces a voltage, which then allows current to keep passing until that magnetic field decreases completely and collapses completely and there's no more induced voltage, no more current.
30:45 So, that's why relays can cause problems, especially for ECUs.
30:49 You often see on ECUs that the outputs have a flyback diode already or protection against flyback or back EMF.
30:58 And that's basically diodes inside the ECU that when this voltage returns the wrong way, that diode stops it or allows it to pass in a bypass the important components of the ECU and let that voltage dissipate through the rest of the system as heat and that sort of thing.
31:16 Hope I'm not going over this too in a weird way, but, so we've got that collapsing magnetic field because it's trying to resist that changing current.
31:26 And in our circuit here, because we have it connected say to a flyback diode, that gives that voltage a path to exit and dissipate elsewhere.
31:37 In our coil, we shut that circuit off completely and we don't actually allow the voltage that accumulates in that coil to pass through or to complete the circuit.
31:48 And we know we need a complete circuit for current to move.
31:51 So, if this collapsing magnetic force is trying to induce current and get current flowing, it obviously wants a path to follow.
32:00 Now, we've cut this off, our secondary coil has no path.
32:04 So, for the magnetic field to overcome the fact that there's no circuit, it basically ramps up the voltage and just keeps ramping that up until it finds a way.
32:14 Just like life finds a way, electricity finds a way.
32:18 So, we're actually allowing that to happen.
32:21 We want it to build up voltage until it gets to a point where it's inducing voltage into both of these coils.
32:28 So, our potential for energy, there's nothing actually flowing yet because our two circuits are separate.
32:34 They're separate from each other and their positive and negative sides are separate too.
32:38 They have no connection.
32:40 But what we have is our coils have different amounts of windings.
32:45 Our primary coil will have a certain amount of windings, a few, and our secondary will have a lot more.
32:51 And it's kinda, if you think about, say one winding of the coil induces, say, three volts of voltage due to the collapsing magnetic force.
33:04 The more coils you have, the more that adds up.
33:06 So, a coil with 10 windings will induce 30 volts.
33:10 Our secondary side has just a heap more windings than our primary.
33:14 So, as that magnetic field is closing, a voltage is induced into our primary and secondary.
33:19 Primary is jumping up maybe like 50, 100 volts, that sort of thing.
33:24 Secondary is jumping up to thousands, tens of thousands, and really getting drastic.
33:29 Now, what happens when we start bumping voltage up that far and having a higher voltage potential? We can actually break down an air gap between, say, our spark plug.
33:41 So, one thing I often see misconstrued is just because you have two wires with a gap in between doesn't mean you don't have a circuit.
33:50 You do, you've got air in between.
33:52 It's just air has a lot of resistance and the electricity can't pass through.
33:55 It's like putting a resistor in line your circuit that just has a stupid amount of resistance and the electrons just can't pass through.
34:04 So, an air gap is exactly that.
34:06 It's a complete circuit, but there's, so much resistance that we technically say it isn't complete.
34:12 But once we get to a certain amount of voltage, it can actually break down that air gap and induce a voltage across.
34:18 And that's where we get a spark.
34:20 And that's what we want to happen.
34:22 So, we're basically allowing both these coils to increase in voltage, but our extra windings on the secondary side mean it jumps that voltage up quite quicker, quite a lot more, more than our primary side.
34:37 So, we're allowing this primary side to build up to the point where it bridges our air gap.
34:43 Now, this is a very important thing you often see with reading ECU manuals.
34:47 They'll say not to trigger a ignition coil, especially a coil on plug, if it's not actually connected to a spark plug or a circuit.
34:55 And that's because you're essentially taking away our spark plug and our air gap for this to bridge.
35:01 And that voltage is just going to keep increasing and increasing in both of our coils until it eventually finds a way.
35:07 As I said, electricity finds a way.
35:09 And that can be back on your primary side.
35:11 That might get to a point where it bridges a gap between a transistor inside your ECU or just along the wiring somewhere through the insulation.
35:21 Basically, it's going to get that current flowing somewhere, no, matter what.
35:24 So, that collapsing magnetic field, it wants to impede that current change.
35:31 It's going to start inducing voltage to get that current flowing to the point where it will flow.
35:38 And whether that's through our spark plug across the air gap or through our ECU, it's going to happen.
35:44 So, that's why we have things like flyback diodes, protection inside ECUs or warnings, especially in the manuals that will specifically say, don't use this output for an inductive load.
35:57 That's what it's referring to.
35:58 It's because those circuits don't have the protection needed if that voltage was to increase to that point.
36:06 So yeah, that's a very, I guess, broad overlook of it all.
36:11 It does get quite in depth.
36:13 There's obviously calculations you can do to work out things like your dwell time, injector dead time.
36:19 But because you can often find that information from the company, and it is something that needs to be kind of tested and actually found out, that's why it's, so important to actually have a good documentation on these products.
36:31 So, you can just read them, put them into your ECU.
36:34 You don't have to worry about trying to calculate all this stuff and actually work it out for yourself.
36:40 I'm just going to go through my notes quickly because I want to make sure, I feel like I've glossed over things that I shouldn't have.
36:44 I think I tried to oversimplify it a little bit.
36:46 I remember there's questions at the end of this.
36:48 So, if I have glossed over anything way too quickly, please chuck the question in.
36:54 So, let's just have a look through here.
37:06 All right, so I guess, yeah.
37:08 The main thing to sort of take from this is it's the collapsing and growing of those magnetic fields that is causing our biggest issues.
37:18 It's why we sort of stress about it when it comes to switching relays and injectors.
37:24 It's because when we turn it on, we send current through, which grows our magnetic field.
37:32 But then when we switch it off, as I said, that magnetic field wants to get that voltage back, get that current flowing again as it collapses.
37:39 And that's how we get a back voltage the other way.
37:43 It will find a way to send that current through the coil again.
37:48 So, that's why we kind of have some, we need some sort of protection.
37:51 And a lot of the times it is just some sort of, say a diode that allows the current to flow the opposite way away from things like our ECU transistors.
38:03 Same with our injector and coil circuits.
38:05 The ECU will have some sort of, I guess like a bypass tap that, when the pressure or the flow is going the wrong way, it can bypass it off somewhere else.
38:15 Because unfortunately when we are switching coils, which they are prevalent in everything we do with electrical relays, injectors, coils, starter motors, all motors and things like that, we do have to switch them off at some point.
38:28 And that's where we get that collapse of magnetic field.
38:31 And for things like our injectors and coils, we're doing that really, really fast, thousands of time a minute.
38:36 And with every engine cycle, that sort of thing.
38:39 And we're switching it, so fast that we're getting this constant buildup of magnetic force, collapse, buildup, collapse.
38:46 And that constant back and forth is what creates a steady voltage through a wire or a conductor.
38:53 And that's sort of the principle behind things like alternators and starter motors because they've gone the opposite way.
38:59 Except you're using, say for an alternator, for example, you're not creating a magnetic field as such with your electricity and you're not using that magnetic field to move things.
39:12 You're doing it the opposite way.
39:13 Your engine's moving.
39:14 That movement of the magnetic field, it then induces voltage into the windings and that sort of thing.
39:21 It's a bit more complicated than that.
39:23 I've glossed over that bit too quickly again.
39:25 You do have an electromagnet in that that you can turn on and off to create that movement of magnetic field.
39:32 But also, yeah, I'm trying to explain more that it's the movement that is creating the force or the voltage in that instance.
39:39 Probably, sorry, I'm probably confused with that.
39:42 I'll talk about the reluctor sensor just to clarify that a little bit more.
39:46 So, the reluctor sensor uses the same principle.
39:50 Inside here, we have a permanent magnet.
39:52 So, we have a permanent magnetic field.
39:56 If I draw this like this, just to say that it is, it looks like a bum.
40:02 We have our magnetic field around that.
40:04 That is permanent.
40:05 We're not switching that on.
40:07 We don't put power and ground across our terminals and turn that electromagnetic field on.
40:11 That is constantly there, and it's not moving back or forth.
40:15 It's not getting stronger or weaker.
40:18 It is just there.
40:19 The key point is we have a trigger wheel, which we'll always see that.
40:24 I'm gonna draw a really simple one, just like this for teeth.
40:30 And it's that trigger wheel that is, why don't I do three? Make it even.
40:36 That trigger wheel is what's causing our voltage.
40:39 So, what's happening as that turns, tooth gets closer.
40:42 It's the same sort of thing with when we have a core, some sort of metal in our coil.
40:48 When it's in that magnetic field, it increases the magnetic flux and helps make it stronger, I guess.
40:55 So, you can think as we move this tooth closer, we're moving it into that magnetic field and it strengthens the magnetic field and makes it change its characteristics.
41:07 So, as you can think, as we turn this, every time a tooth gets closer and then as it goes further away, our magnetic field is changing and it's then moving in a way that goes across our coil inside that induces a voltage.
41:21 So, trying to make that a bit more coherent.
41:26 It's the physical movement.
41:28 So, say a wheel is turning our sensitive trigger wheel here, that movement through our magnetic field changes the magnetic flux strength.
41:37 And that movement then is going across our windings, our separate electrical system here, our circuit, and that induces a voltage into that circuit.
41:46 And basically your ECU reads that voltage change and says, it can see, comes across as a sine wave.
41:53 So, you'll see these images of the sensor circuit just kind of being like this.
41:59 And that's because as our wheel gets closer, it gets stronger, as the wheel moves away, it gets weaker and to the point where it goes into a negative.
42:07 And that's basically just in between each tooth.
42:09 So, if we stretch this out, your gear would kind of look like this and you'd have your teeth all at those same points.
42:16 And, so your ECU can then read that voltage change and say, you pick a point, a threshold, and it says every time it sees that, that's one turn or one trigger wheel.
42:27 So, that's, yeah, it's the same principles as our inductors, still using Faraday's law of inductance, but it's going a different direction, I guess.
42:36 It's using a mechanical force to influence that magnetic field.
42:41 Okay, remember I've got questions coming up soon.
42:44 So, please chuck as many in as you can.
42:47 And if I'm glossing over things way too quick, I'm probably gonna remember things after this that I should have talked about, but I think we are getting close to the end.
42:59 Let's take a second and read my notes again.
43:19 Okay, I think I've gone over everything.
43:21 I might just try and summarize it a little bit.
43:25 Things I really want you to remember, the magnetic field, as long as none of the things that are creating the field or influencing it change, if that field is static, then the magnetic field itself is static.
43:38 There's no sort of waves to it.
43:40 There's the arrows that you see on drawings, they are misleading.
43:44 You'll see them like this.
43:46 They're not actually static.
43:47 It's not like a wave kind of thing.
43:49 Think of it more as a topological map.
43:52 You have lines that show a mountain and as they're closer, further away, it's just a representation of the strength of the magnetic field and where it's influencing and pulling things and influencing external things.
44:10 So, it's the actual change in our magnetic field that we really are taking notice of.
44:15 That's what's causing things like our impedance, the fight back or our induction into our coils, creating a voltage somewhere else.
44:25 It's also that change, which is inducing voltage back the way it came for our relays and injectors, which causes issues.
44:33 Not just for firing voltage the wrong way at high voltages into our ECU, things like that, but that can influence anything around it that is a conductor.
44:45 So, any wires going near our field as it collapses or grows will induce a voltage that creates things like noise, which as we know is not what we want when it comes to electrical.
44:54 We want to avoid noise as much as possible.
44:57 And that actually plays into good about shielding.
45:01 Why shielding is important.
45:03 We have a ground around that shield where as that magnetic field passes over, the voltage is induced into that shield rather than the wires inside.
45:13 And then it passes through to a ground point and dissipates out throughout the rest of the system.
45:18 So, that's why shielding wires works and why it's important because we have, so many of these components in our engine bay that is causing constant changes in magnetic fields.
45:28 And the shielding is going to protect those sensitive signals.
45:31 Things like inductor, sorry, a LUCTA sensor, that small voltage change across those two wires, for one, it's being created by this kind of thing.
45:41 It can be influenced by other components doing this exact same thing.
45:45 Like if we had a coil running next to the wires, that coil is going to induce voltage in and the ECU is going to see that as trigger points.
45:51 And obviously that's wrong.
45:52 So, that's why you'll see things like reluctor sensors for cam, crank, wheel speed.
45:56 They'll always have some sort of shielding twisted core basically, to prevent that kind of magnetic force influencing.
46:05 I feel like I've glossed over this way too quickly.
46:07 There's definitely more I should be talking about.
46:09 Maybe I'll just, I'll move into the questions and see what you guys have got for me.
46:12 And if I think of anything else, I will say it, yeah, when it comes to my head and hopefully it'll still be during the webinar.
46:19 So, I'm going to go through the questions now.
46:21 Let's have a look what we got here.
46:23 There's actually quite a few questions, great.
46:25 Tazio, is the closing time of the injector calculated in the ECU? Yeah, so that's the important thing.
46:33 Your ECU, depending on the ECU, sorry, there might be ECUs that don't do it, but I feel like they all should, especially high -end ones.
46:42 Your ECU is using that dead time that you've told it.
46:45 So, you've told it at what voltage, what pressure, that sort of thing, how much time it needs to allow for to overcome that dead time and actually get it open.
46:55 So, it'll calculate that along with the amount of time it needs to inject the right amount of fuel, that sort of thing.
47:02 And then it will give a certain amount of pulse width and send that to your injector.
47:07 And yeah, your ECU is going to take care of all that as it's going, because we can't do that ourselves in our head thousands of times a minute.
47:15 So yeah, as long as you've got the correct information, it's going to, the ECU is going to do its job properly.
47:20 Essentially, that's all an ECU is, a glorified calculator.
47:23 It's just doing all these calculations, making sure things happen at the right time, when and how.
47:29 So, that is why having good data on things like injector dead times and coil dwell periods is, so important, because you put garbage information in, you're going to get garbage out.
47:39 Moving on in the questions, we've got SRT4Ruffin555.
47:45 I'm sure that means something else.
47:47 Coil-on-plug getting hot on me with just the ECU powered on.
47:54 FT550 FuelTech K-series coils.
47:57 Car is brand new build, never started, just testing coils and injectors.
48:01 They work when tested with a FuelTech 550, but they are getting hot.
48:06 Okay, so this is a common problem that you have with the older style ignition systems that have a single coil.
48:15 So, most of you young guys now probably don't even have any experience them.
48:20 You have a single coil, and that spark that happens is distributed.
48:26 But we do the exact same thing here, just in a single coil, and it gets sent to its right direction.
48:32 But the way they do it is it's got a constant ignition power and then there's a contact that closes, much like our sensor.
48:40 It closes every time it needs to fire, and that makes our field grow, collapse, and exit.
48:48 But what we have is a situation where the engine might be at a point where it's supposed to be growing this magnetic field, so, the dwell period.
48:57 And if you've shut the engine off conveniently at that point, that circuit will be shut.
49:03 Turn the ignition on, it's gonna be constantly putting current through that coil, and that's just gonna sit there.
49:09 It's gonna get hot because current is flowing through it.
49:12 When we send current through, we get a magnetic force, but we also get things like heat.
49:17 It's a byproduct of the current passing through the resistance of the wire.
49:22 So, while we do get a magnetic field, we're also getting heat.
49:25 Normally, it's a quick thing that happens.
49:27 It's on and off and done.
49:29 But when we have the situation with the older engines especially, where we have the contacts that close, that coil can stay on, and you'll hear of people killing their coil, basically, frying it because it gets too hot.
49:40 It sits in this on position constantly, and yeah, it gets way too hot.
49:45 Why your particular one is doing that is a bit unusual because it should be basically switching with the ECU.
49:52 ECU shouldn't be switching that coil on until there's actually a trigger period.
49:56 So, when it sees things like a crank signal.
49:59 So, just having to think about it, to me, it kind of tells me that something is, yeah, keeping the coil on longer than it should be.
50:10 You're getting essentially dwelling it too long.
50:12 It's holding that current longer than it needs to and not dissipating it.
50:18 Without really seeing it and getting into it and testing myself, it's a bit hard to say.
50:22 Just trying to reread the question.
50:25 So, it never started just testing coils.
50:29 Okay, so that kind of tells me that, yeah, there might be a problem with wiring, that there might be power and ground constantly to those coils.
50:37 If the car was running normally, I would not say that's a problem because essentially if you were keeping that coil in that saturated state and constantly on, you'll never get a spark because that magnetic field isn't closing.
50:51 So yeah, the fact that your coils are getting hot even when you're testing, yeah.
50:58 I'll be looking at how often it's getting switched, I guess, like what's the best way to check this? You should have constant 12 volt, so your ignition, and then you'll have a constant ground and then your trigger.
51:12 So, your trigger should only get a ground when you want that current to pass through and create that magnetic field.
51:19 So, you should only get that ground trigger when your coil is being triggered, which should be when your ECU tells it.
51:25 So, I would definitely check, see if those wires maybe have a short ground somewhere that might be keeping that on constantly.
51:32 It's definitely a hard one.
51:33 Definitely recommend jumping, pushing that question into the forums and we can talk about it a bit more.
51:38 Give me some feedback on some testing that you might do.
51:41 So yeah, SRT for Ruffin 555, get in the forums and chuck that question in, let me know how you go.
51:47 Moving on, I've got more questions here than I was expecting.
51:50 Next one is MarkHawks43, since what year do we start seeing what kind of diode? That's a bit of a hard one to say.
51:59 I couldn't tell you off the top of my head.
52:00 Diodes have been around for basically as long as we've had electronics.
52:05 They're one of the simplest and most common found components in our system.
52:12 We start seeing that kind of diode.
52:18 So yeah, like I said, the diodes are in pretty much everything that we have, our computers, our phones, our switching systems.
52:27 As far as when a certain, I guess you're trying to ask when the ECU company have started putting that in.
52:33 I honestly couldn't tell you off the top of my head.
52:35 Key advice, read the instruction manual for your ECU.
52:40 I know, as we guys, ADHD people, we tend to just throw stuff in there in a manual way.
52:45 It has really good information in there and things like that.
52:48 It'll tell you, most ECU companies these days will have their own protection internally, but there might be a caveat sometimes where a certain output isn't designed for inductors and just be aware of that.
53:00 Another one, chuck in the forums if you've got a certain situation that you're trying to work out whether your particular ECU has that or not.
53:07 Next question, I've got Pico underscore Boo.
53:11 Doesn't scare me.
53:13 Is it only two wire ignition cores that can harm the ECU? Is it possible for three, four wire ignition coils to harm the ECU? Yeah, so that touches on a good point.
53:22 It's most commonly the two wire coil systems that have external igniter that will cause these issues.
53:28 It's mainly because they're picking up that, as I said, that current is trying to find somewhere to go.
53:34 So, it's going to find the least resistance.
53:38 So, that's generally when we have coils like this that have a ground going to our coil, it will probably most likely find that ground point back to the block and create a circuit that way.
53:50 So, it's less likely, but it can still happen with your three and four wire coils.
53:55 It basically comes down to whatever that voltage can find to pass current through.
54:01 And that's ideally we want it to be a spark plug.
54:04 And that is also another good point why grounding of our coils is super important.
54:09 We often see questions about where to ground coils and basically always ground your coils to the head just because it creates that circuit where you've got ground out of your plug and completes our circuit to the spark plug.
54:24 So, that should be two.
54:25 So, that's say in your engine, that's connected to your engine.
54:29 That ground goes to your engine.
54:31 It gives a pass for your current to pass through and back to the coil itself.
54:35 You essentially got a, the secondary coil is its own little circuit in the coil and engine itself.
54:40 And we don't want that current passing through all our sensitive electronics, that sort of thing.
54:46 You could actually have a situation where if you earthed your coil to say, if you did something really bad and earthed it to the housing of your ECU, that collapsing magnetic field, that really high voltage, if you have your coil unplugged, not connected to the engine anywhere, that might then use that earth back through your ECU and basically fry everything in there because it is high voltage.
55:08 And yeah, your electronics really don't like that.
55:10 Trust me, I found out the hard way.
55:12 Not in an ECU though, luckily.
55:16 Hopefully that, yeah, so it happens.
55:18 It can happen in any coil.
55:19 The two wire ones are more prone because their igniter is elsewhere and just the way that circuit works.
55:25 Next one, we've got fuel send LLC.
55:30 What is the purpose of an inductor in a circuit used to control a coil? Is it for ramping up the field to activate a coil? Old TCMS had these and sometimes mistaken for caps or diodes.
55:41 Okay, so maybe I glossed over this too quickly.
55:44 An inductor is essentially these components.
55:47 These are all inductors.
55:48 A coil pack is an inductor.
55:51 An injector is an inductor.
55:53 A relay is an inductor.
55:54 An inductor is something that creates its own magnetic field to complete a task.
55:59 So, the relay uses that magnetic field to switch it.
56:02 Injector uses it to open and our coil uses it to induce voltage and create a spark.
56:09 So, inductor circuit, is it ramping up the field to activate a coil? Probably, how can I answer this properly? So, I might have touched over things a bit too quickly.
56:23 When we're talking about the ramping up of the field to activate the coil, that's the dwell period.
56:30 So, that's a direct relation to impedance.
56:34 The, yeah, it's impeding that change in current.
56:38 And that's why we have that change in current, the dwell period.
56:42 So, it can't just be instantly on, instant big magnetic field.
56:46 We have to have this kind of gradual growth because there is that fight back.
56:50 I'm probably not answering your question 100%.
56:52 I'm sorry.
56:52 It's just because there's a bit of a misconception there with what an inductor is, I think.
56:58 They do get mistaken for caps sometimes, capacitors.
57:02 They're doing a very similar job.
57:04 They're holding electrical energy in a magnetic field, whereas a capacitor does it with electrical field.
57:11 It's slightly different.
57:13 It's holding it in a, best way is probably to explain it.
57:18 A inductor doesn't like change in current.
57:22 It tries to fight that change in current and that's how it induces a voltage.
57:26 And creates its own sort of circuit voltage and current.
57:29 A capacitor does it using a voltage.
57:32 So, it doesn't like a change in voltage.
57:34 It has a certain current.
57:35 As soon as you take voltage away from it, then it tries to get that voltage back.
57:39 And it's, yeah, it's a little bit confusing.
57:41 I'm sorry.
57:42 Might be something to dive in deeper with more, another webinar maybe, capacitors and things.
57:47 But they are very similar and often confused for being exactly the same thing, I guess.
57:53 Let's, I'll move on with that question.
57:55 Maybe if you feel like I haven't answered that properly, chuck it in the forums and I'll try and have a better go at it.
58:00 Next I've got F1HotRod527.
58:02 I'm modding a GM 2005 GTO harness for standalone use.
58:07 It does not seem like there is shielding.
58:09 Would it help to add this to crank and cam sensor signal wires? One thing I always say when it comes to shielding wires and twisting wires for protection, you basically can't go wrong with that.
58:21 You're not going to harm anything by adding unless you don't do it properly.
58:26 So, say shielding, make sure you don't shield both ends, only shield one end.
58:30 If it's done right, it's always a benefit.
58:33 If the harness hasn't, it kind of does surprise me that a harness wouldn't have any kind of shielding to begin with.
58:39 It might depend on what kind of sensors it uses.
58:43 So, things like our reluctor sensors for speed, as I said, they're very prone to this magnetic field and change.
58:49 Things like our hall effect sensors aren't as prone.
58:51 So, it's not as detrimental, but it is still something we consider and still shield for.
58:57 My advice would be, because you're building the harness yourself and you have the opportunity to make it shielded, I would definitely do it.
59:04 It's just going to save you that headache if for whatever reason it does, it might be a problem.
59:10 Next question, Tazio, why are R35 coils regarded as some of the best ones to use? It basically comes down to how well they create that magnetic field and create a good spark, that kind of thing there.
59:23 As far as I'm aware, in my, whenever I talk about them and hear about them, they're just, they're a good, reliable coil, easy to get these days.
59:32 You buy the, you know, not knockoff, but just aftermarket versions.
59:35 And it just comes down to, yeah, they are able to provide a really good spark.
59:41 And during these periods where, you know, we're trying to fire it really quickly, other coils, you often hear about stock coils breaking down at high RPM.
59:51 And that's because we have, it's switching, so fast and we can't overcome that point, that dwell period, I guess.
59:58 And we can't get our magnetic force strong enough to actually induce the right kind of voltage and get that spark to happen.
01:00:06 So, everything's just happening too quickly, turning off and on, and that coil just can't create enough to spark the spark plug.
01:00:14 And that's where we, yeah, get a breakdown of our ignition.
01:00:17 So yeah, things like our R35 coils, your IGNAs, they're just proven, tested at these high RPM and are reliable, I guess.
01:00:26 That's why they're, yeah, they're regarded as some of the best ones to use.
01:00:30 Moving on, next question.
01:00:32 I've got SRT4, Ruffin 555 again.
01:00:36 Thanks for helping.
01:00:37 I will look into the wire harness more.
01:00:39 Was smart coil, five wire, and something I saw online said to put power to, power trigger to trigger, and the three grounds from the harness.
01:00:48 Okay, so it sounds like there might be a bit of a mix up on wiring there.
01:00:50 A hundred percent, jump in the forums.
01:00:52 I even like, yeah, show me a bit of a diagram of how you wired it out and I'll be more than happy to help.
01:00:57 Foul send LC again.
01:00:58 It is a circuit component named inductor.
01:01:01 Okay, so this goes back to my other question up here.
01:01:05 What is the purpose of an inductor in a circuit? Okay, so that might be referring to, so, it gets a bit confusing with the different types.
01:01:13 In electrical circuits, you do have inductors as they're used to smooth out current flow.
01:01:22 So, as I said, an inductor, the magnetic field, it wants to resist that rate of change of current.
01:01:30 And this can actually be useful in some cases.
01:01:33 We use it a lot for in microelectronics.
01:01:36 I'm building a circuit board at the moment for a bit of a control unit for my computer, our car.
01:01:41 And part of that, I have signals that come in that can have very dramatic changes in current.
01:01:48 And you put an inductor basically in line with that circuit and it has that ramp up and down and resists that current change.
01:01:55 So, you don't get dramatic changes in current.
01:01:58 It steadies it out.
01:01:59 And it's basically kind of like a filter for signals and things like that.
01:02:03 So, that's probably, I think that's what is being referred to.
01:02:07 Yeah, if you see a component itself being labeled as an inductor, it's probably something like that.
01:02:12 Or it literally could be anything I've shown you here.
01:02:15 An inductor is, yeah, a very broad umbrella of different kinds of components.
01:02:20 Again, good one to chuck in the forums, even if you've got a circuit diagram, show me that diagram and I'll have a good look at it.
01:02:28 And I think that has gotten to the end of our questions.
01:02:30 It actually didn't go as long as I was expecting.
01:02:32 Again, if you're watching this at a later date, you've got some questions, chuck them in the forums.
01:02:37 I'd be more than happy to delve in a bit deeper and hopefully go over anything I've missed.
01:02:42 Hopefully, you guys watching along, thank you for sticking with it and getting your questions in to me.
01:02:47 Hopefully, you learned something good here.
01:02:49 It's one of those topics that can be kind of confusing, but is actually really interesting once you get into it.
01:02:54 So, I think I'll leave it at that for the day.
01:02:57 Jump on the forums, get your questions out.
01:02:59 Also, we've got the support at hpacademy.com email if you need questions that way.
01:03:07 Get out there and do some work on your projects.
01:03:10 Stop watching YouTube and things.
01:03:11 It's good to have you here though and look forward to next webinar.
01:03:14 Catch you later.