Wednesday, July 21, 2010

My big Tesla Coil revisited

Recently I dug out my big Tesla Coil and decided to update it and make it better.  Some changes I hope to try are a bigger top load, try two capacitors in parallel and make an angled primary coil.

First of all here is the current schematic.  I realized that I had never made a schematic for it.


Here are some pictures of the guts. First we have the Neon Sign Transformer or NST.  It delivers 12KV at 30 ma.
Next we have the spark gap.  It consists of 5 pieces of 1/2 inch copper pipes spaced about 1/8 inch apart inside of a 4 inch PVC pipe with a fan blowing air down them to cool them and to quench the sparks.

Then we have a front view of all of the guts.  The safety gap is the closest item, the transformer connects across it.  Then on the right and left are the choke coils.  Between them is the .06 uF 30KV capacitor and in the back is the spark gap assembly.  Above that you see the primary coil made from #10 electrical wire.
Now for a picture of everything at once.  The secondary coil is wound on a piece of 4 inch PVC about 28 inches long.  The top load is some flexible 3 inch drier vent pipe glued to an aluminum pie plate.
The video is uploaded to YouTube.  The sparks are about 15 inches long.  It used to do nearly 2 foot sparks.  I am not sure why the sparks are smaller.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rwQZdZYdss

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is great nice simple layout and works well. attempting something similar.