I purchased some TVS spike voltage suppressor diodes that came this past week. I haven’t had a chance to install any of them yet. My questions are, how does one test to see if they will take a spike, and how does one know when they have taken a spike?
It’s not easy to do. I have measured voltage spikes by setting the sweep on my oscilloscope slow enough that I will see a single trace and the trigger at the level I want to check for, say 100 volts, then briefly shorting the transformer output until the scope triggers; I don’t actually see it the spike. If the TVS makes it impossible to trigger the scope, it’s working. In practice, you’ll never know when it stops a spike.
Bob;
Many thanks!