Paul Burridge wrote in message . ..
Hi all,

Is there some black magic required to get higher order harmonics out
of an oscillator?
I'm only trying to get 17.2Mhz out of a 3.44Mhz source and am thus far
failing spectacularly. I've tried everything I can think of so far to
no avail. All I can get apart from the fundamental is a strong third
harmonic on 10.32Mhz, regardless of what I tune for. I've tried
passing the osc output through two successive inverter gates to
sharpen it up, but still nothing beyond the third appears after tuned
amplification for the fifth. I no longer have a spectrum analyser so
can't check for the presence of a decent comb of harmonics at the
input to the multiplier stage but can only assume the fifth is well
down in the mush for some reason.

Fifth harmonic frequency multipliers do exist, but it's usually much
easier to double and triple your way to the final frequency if possible.
(You just discovered this, I think!)

The lack of even harmonics is typical of push-pull stages ... if you
are messing around with CMOS gates, you might try using a TTL gate
(which pulls low much stronger than it pulls high) or an open collector
TTL gate, both with smmallish (100-200 ohm) pull-up resistors for
doubling.

Why not do a x3 followed by a x2 to get 17.2 MHz out of 2.866 MHz?

Tim.