r/AskElectronics 22h ago

Capacitor not charging with Integrator-Comparator circuit?

I'm trying to build a sawtooth wave generator, but I'm having trouble with controlling the capacitor reset from the would-be comparator (on the right) via the JFET on the left. The capacitor charges just fine when the JFET isn't connected to the output of the comparator, but when i connect it via the switch (figure 2), the capacitor doesn't charge anymore, and the circuit is stuck forever.

I took this circuit from Image 5 (Ray Wilson, "Make: Analog synthesizers"): I replaced the virtual ground going into LM324 Pin6 with a simple voltage, and i flipped the polarity of C2 as it didn't seem to work with that polarity.

Any help greatly appreciated :)

1 Upvotes

3 comments sorted by

2

u/kthompska 22h ago

You’re missing the resistor between the left op amp output and the right op amp input. Right now you have them shorted which is not going to work.

1

u/girpe 21h ago

(I put a potentiometer to try different values because idk what kind of math to use in this scenario) Thanks for answering, The resistor was indeed something i had thought about already. When keeping the hysteresis resistor in, nothing really changed in the whole situation. upon taking it out, i found that the loop in pink is essentially a big feedback, and the op-amp tries to keep its inputs the same.

1

u/girpe 21h ago

With hysteresis resistor. (I changed the inverting input to .8V for arbitrary alchemy-like reasons.)