Diy induction heater: design features and an example of a working diagram of the device

Today, induction heaters are most often used to heat water. The popularity of these devices is largely due to their environmental safety and low cost.

Having assembled an induction heater with your own hands, you can make a device for instantaneous heating of water and at the same time save on buying a finished one.

Advantages and disadvantages

Thanks to the use of this device in everyday life, you can achieve maximum performance and high reliability during operation. To install the unit, you do not need to take a permit, unlike a gas boiler. If the device is used in heating boilers, then in certain situations it is quite possible to do without a pumping unit, since the movement of the coolant will be carried out by convection. An inductive heater has a number of advantages:

• Low cost.
• It is quite easy to assemble an inductive heater with your own hands.
• The device does not make noise during operation.
• The presence of constant vibration makes regular maintenance unnecessary.
• Failures are extremely rare.

All this made the device very popular. However, today there are no devices that would be completely devoid of disadvantages. Among the disadvantages of induction heaters, several are worth noting:

• A lot of electrical energy is consumed.
• A lot of heat is generated during operation.
• To prevent overheating and subsequent breakdown of the unit, it is necessary to install a temperature sensor.

However, the advantages of this device completely neutralize its disadvantages. At home, an induction heater is most often assembled from a welding inverter.

Design features

It is due to their simplicity that these devices are very popular. There is a coil in the body, inside of which a piece of pipe is inserted, with the help of two nozzles connected to the heating system. The coil can be connected directly to the mains supply or through a converter. In the second case, the frequency of current oscillations in the inverter will increase. The converter contains three elements:

• Rectifier.
• Two-transistor inverter.
• Semiconductor control circuit.

The principle of operation of such a device is in many ways similar to a transformer. The main difference is the secondary winding - it is short-circuited and located inside the primary.

Manufacturing recommendations

It will be very simple to make an induction heater with your own hands, the working diagram of which is given below. The work on its manufacture will not take much time, as well as large financial investments will not be required. When starting to manufacture the device, it is worth paying attention to several points:

• By its design, the device is a high power multivibrator.
• Resistance allows you to avoid overheating of semiconductor devices and its selection should be given special attention.
• The inductor is a spiral consisting of copper wire with the required number of turns.

Since transistors quickly fail from overheating, they must be installed on radiators of a special design. Using a welding inverter will reduce the cost of a homemade device, but a three-phase transformer can also be used. Below is the simplest diagram of an induction metal heater. You can assemble such a device with your own hands quickly enough.

It is a transformer with two windings:

• The first circuit is needed to convert electricity into eddy currents.
• The second winding allows the converted energy to be transferred to the coolant.

As a body, you can use a piece of plastic pipe, the wall thickness of which is at least three millimeters. Moreover, its diameter should be larger in comparison with heating pipes. The length of the body is determined in each case individually, but most often about one meter is enough. The inner diameter of the pipe is in the range of 50 to 80 mm. After that, the pipe must be wrapped with copper wire, and the number of turns should be about 90.

To install induction heating, you have to perform the following steps:

• The polymer pipe is fixed.
• The ends of the core must be cut, leaving about 10 cm in stock for the manufacture of bends.
• A corner is attached to the lower outlet for connecting the return, if the device is to be installed in a heating boiler.
• Copper wire, pre-cut into 50 mm lengths, is poured into a pipe, which is then closed with a net on both sides.
• The protective circuit of the device is installed.
• The heater is connected to a power source, after which the core must be filled with water.

The final step after assembling the prior will be to check its performance. For ease of replacing the water heating device, ball valves should be installed at all inputs.