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I know it looks sloppy but this is my very own homemade boost converter! It outputs 6watts of power from a 3.7v battery(phone battery)... It's switched by an astable multivibrator, and the switch is the MN1526 bjt transistor.

Out of curiosity, please enlighten me, is a square inductor ideal, I know a toroidal inductor is the best but due to lack of material, I'm using a square shaped(a sharp edge U with an I super glued on top), so what do you think such an iron core fairs against a toroidal one?enter image description here

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  • \$\begingroup\$ If it works and if that's what you have readily available, then it "fares well." That said, iron is often more for lower frequencies and ferrite is more for higher frequencies of operation. Eddy current losses rapidly increase with frequency in pretty much all metals. When stuck with iron, you can reduce the thickness perpendicular to flux direction by using thin tape/laminations or by powdering and insulating materials (which is pretty much what ferrite does.) At really high frequencies, iron pretty much cannot be used. \$\endgroup\$
    – jonk
    Aug 16, 2020 at 21:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ I apologise I didn't put soft in front of iron, but it's a soft iron core \$\endgroup\$
    – Bongani Khumalo
    Aug 16, 2020 at 21:06
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    \$\begingroup\$ I don't know if it is only a visual effect, but I think the third capacitor from the bottom (topmost of the three smallest capacitors) has a bulging top, so it might fail soon, or it may already be damaged. \$\endgroup\$
    – Justme
    Aug 16, 2020 at 21:34
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    \$\begingroup\$ If your losses are more than 5% it’s not a great design for a boost converter which already has an voltage ratio squared motor impedance divider , so you get huge ripple currents in your caps on startup. \$\endgroup\$
    – Tony Stewart EE75
    Aug 17, 2020 at 8:41
  • \$\begingroup\$ If you don’t have a ferrite choke consider a small relay coil without an armature.. maybe not. But better to have a lossless Air coil and use softstart with PFM to 1MHz and low capacitance switch \$\endgroup\$
    – Tony Stewart EE75
    Aug 17, 2020 at 8:43

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