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Capacitor Discharge Ignition(CDI) Workin

Principle, Its Advantage and Disadvantag
by Tarun Agarwal | at ELECTRI

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What is a CDI System? A Capacitor Discharge Ignition is an electronic ignition device that stores an
and then discharges it through an ignition coil in order to produce a powerful spark from the spark
engine. Here the ignition is provided by the capacitor charge. The capacitor simply charges and dis
fraction of time making it possible to create sparks CDIs are commonly found on motorbikes and scoot

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CDI Ignition Diagram

Circuits
 Capacitor Discharge Ignition System

Working principle a CDI System

A capacitor discharge ignition works by passing an electrical current over a capacitor. This type of ig
charge quickly. A CDI ignition starts by generating a charge and storing it up before sending it out to
order to ignite the engine.

This power passes through a capacitor and is transferred to an ignition coil that helps boost the pow
transformer and allowing the energy pass through it instead of catching any of it.

The CDI ignition systems, therefore, allow the engine to keep running as long as there is a charge in t
The block diagram of CDI shown below.
 CDI System

Working of Capacitor Discharge Ignition

A Capacitor Discharge Ignition consists of several parts and is integrated with the ignition system
foremost parts of a CDI include the stator, charging coil, hall sensor, flywheel and the timing mark.
 Typical Setup of Capacitive Discharge Ignition

Flywheel and Stator

The flywheel is a large horseshoe permanent magnet rolled into a circle that turns-ON the crankshaft.
plate holding all of the electrical coils of wire, which is used to power ON the ignition coil, bike’s li
charging circuits.

Charging Coil
The charging coil is one coil in the stator, which is used to produce 6 volts to charge the capacitor C
flywheel’s movement the single pulsed power is produced and it supplied to the sparking plug by the
ensure the maximum spark.

Hall Sensor
The Hall Sensor measures the hall effect, the instantaneous point where the flywheel’s magnet change
a south pole. When the pole change occurs, the device sends a single, tiny pulse to the CDI box which t
the energy from the charging capacitor into the high voltage transformer.

Timing Mark
The timing mark is an arbitrary alignment point shared by the engine case and stator plate. It indic
which the top of the piston’s travel is equivalent to the trigger point on the flywheel and stator.

By rotating the stator plate left and right, you effectively change the trigger point of the CDI, thus advan
your timing, respectively. As the flywheel turns fast, the charge coil produces an AC current from +6V to

The CDI box has a collection of semiconductor rectifier that connected to G1 on the box allows only the
enter the capacitor (C1). While the wave entering into the CDI, the rectifier allows only the positive wave

Trigger Circuit
The trigger circuit is a switch, probably using a Transistor, Thyristor or SCR. This triggered by a pu
Sensor on the stator. They only allow current from one side of the circuit until they are triggered.
Parts for Allison
Series
New, Surplus, Used, and
Reman Parts All Allison
Series Transmissions

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Once the Capacitor C1 is fully charged, the circuit can be triggered again. This is why there is timing
motor. If the capacitor and stator coil were perfect, they would charge instantaneously and we can trig
as our wish. However, they require a fraction of a second to full charge.

If the circuit triggers too fast, then the spark from the spark plug will be enormously weak. Certainl
accelerating motors, we may have the triggering faster than the capacitor full charge, which will aff
Whenever the capacitor is discharged, then the switch turns itself off and the capacitor charges again.

The trigger pulse from the Hall sensor feeds into the gate latch and allows all the stored charge to
primary side of the high-voltage transformer. The transformer has a common ground between
secondary windings, known as an auto step-up transformer.

Therefore, as if we increase the windings on the secondary side, you will multiply the voltage. Since a
a good 30,000 volts to sparks, there must be many thousands of wraps of wire around the high volta
side.

When the gate opens and dumps all the current into the primary side, it saturates the low-voltage side o
and sets up a short but immensely magnetic field. As the field reduces gradually, a large current in the
force the secondary windings to produce extremely high voltage.

However, the voltage is now so high that it can arc through the air, so rather than being absorbed o
transformer, the charge travels up the plug wire and jumps the plug gap.

When we want to shut down the motor engine, we have two switches the key switch or the kill swit
ground out the charging circuit so the entire charging pulse is sent to ground. Since the CDI can no lon
cease to provide the spark and the engine will slow to a stop.
Advantages of CDI
The major advantage of CDI is that the capacitor can be fully charged in a very short time (typically
is suited to application where the insufficient dwell time is available.
The capacitor discharge ignition system has a short transient response, a fast voltage rise (betwee
compared to inductive systems (300 to 500 V/ µs) and shorter spark duration (about 50-80 µs).
The fast voltage rising makes CDI systems unaffected to shunt resistance.

Disadvantages of CDI
The capacitor discharge ignition system generates huge electromagnetic noise and this is the main
are rarely used by automobile manufacturers.
The short spark duration is not good for lighting relatively lean mixtures as used at low power le
problem many CDI ignitions release multiple sparks at low engine speeds.

I hope you have clearly understood the topic of Capacitor Discharge Ignition(CDI) Working Principle, It’s
Disadvantage. If you have any queries on this topic or on any Electronic and Electrical projects leave the
below. Here is a question for you What is the role of the Hall sensor in CDI System?

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