Introduction: How to Get 100KV Out of Your Flyback!!! VERY SIMPLE SETUP

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I saw this instructable on how to make a high voltage power supply with a CFL ballast circuit and and a long time after that it hit me, instead of breaking all my parents light bulbs why not use an electronic ballast? So I tried it and I was blown away by the results for, what would normally be a rather large circuit (not the CFL, a circuit with the equivalent power), just a ballast. *sorry about the blurry pictures, I had to turn the flash off on the camera and it messed up the pictures a little. Also I didn't get very many pictures because I had already made it before I got the idea to make an instructable.

NOTE: I see a lot of people burning up their ballasts or getting very poor results. Im not sure why but some ballasts just dont like it and some transformers dont give very impressive sparks. My advice would be to do some quick tests in open air without oil, if it works then set everything up, if not then try different ballasts/transformers. And this will eventually kill your ballast no matter what kind it is, mine lasted for a while though.

-=DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE: do not attempt if you dont have very much experience with high voltage=-

Step 1: Hook Up the Primary

I have an instructable for finding the primary and secondary windings on a flyback but you wont need to follow that for this setup. The first two pins on the transformer should be separated a little further than the rest, the are your primary, hook up the ballast to these and test it just to make sure, there should be lots of corona and will probably arc to the other pins. NOTE: do not let it arc for very long or the insulation will fail in a matter of seconds!!! You dont have to use a flyback with a core encase you have any broken ones but the results will be pore. 

Step 2: Insulate It

Because flybacks cant hold such a high voltage your going to need to submerge it in oil. Before you do that solder wires to your primary's and cut a length of the high voltage wire from the out put and solder that on the second output pin. I find that the small plastic Folgers containers wok well. After you have selected a container to put your transformer in and have soldered all the necessary pins put the transformer in with the wires sticking out of the top and fill it with oil until it covers the entire transformer. You can use vegetable oil, mineral oil, hydraulic fluid, and maybe motor oil but I'm not sure, I used vegetable oil and I'v been using this thing non-stop and it works great. After that cut holes in the lit to put your wires through and then do just that. After every thing is in place hot glue the wires to lid and the lid to the container to keep oil from leaking, make sure everything is dry or the glue wont stick. 

Step 3: Try It Out!!!


The first part of the video was when I first made it, as you can see it arced to the next pin and caught on fire, in the second part I was using the oil filled Folgers container.