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My First Tesla Coil!
I just made my first tesla coil, it stands only about 6 inches tall and has a diameter of ~1". The tank capacitence is ~940 pF. The wire gauge is 30. The topload is 6 inches in diamerer and 1 inch tall. the power supply is a 7.5kv, 60mA NST with a terry filter. It's a static spark gap. The primary has 13 turns of 14 gauge wire, it's a 30 degree cone.
It gives out nice arcs and cornea. I will post photos and video soon, as my workshop reeks of ozone right now.
I can probably get better preformance with using thicker (or no) aligator clips (prototype stage right now) and if I change the primary. The wire got too hard to turn, so near the center there's like 2" of leeway on all sides of the secondary...
sorry about sound quality in the video
the rod in the video is kinda grounded. The rod you see is a thin copper pipe taped to a 3 foot, 1/4 inch thick dowel rod that I'm holding onto.
It gives out nice arcs and cornea. I will post photos and video soon, as my workshop reeks of ozone right now.
I can probably get better preformance with using thicker (or no) aligator clips (prototype stage right now) and if I change the primary. The wire got too hard to turn, so near the center there's like 2" of leeway on all sides of the secondary...
sorry about sound quality in the video
the rod in the video is kinda grounded. The rod you see is a thin copper pipe taped to a 3 foot, 1/4 inch thick dowel rod that I'm holding onto.
Discussions
11 years ago
congrats
11 years ago
No fair! I want a NST right NOW!!!
My dad won't let be buy one from ebay... :-(
Great job on your tesla coil though! And how many volts or how long are the sparks are jumping from the tesla coil to the ground?
Reply 11 years ago
haha cornea on the grounded object starts at 3.4 inches arcs start at 2.7 inches cool little purple stuff is in between those to distances.
Reply 11 years ago
That is quite impressive, I say about 50Kv to 100Kv coming out of your tesla coil!
Reply 11 years ago
cool! At first I was disapointed cause all of those bigger tesla coils have arcs that are longer than the tesla coil it's self. But I'm quite satisfied with it. I'm going to make a better primary and a better base during this weekend, as I have 4 days off of school including this weekend. yay
Reply 11 years ago
Great!
Reply 11 years ago
look for anyone with a dead neon sign (basically the tube is broken) and see if you can just take it off there hands. I dad that and got 2 9k-30ma nst. they dont look like the one on here but hey they were free lol.
11 years ago
oh, and by the way my voice doesn't sound like that in real life. I do not bite my tongue when I saw my s's and stuff like that. It's just a combo of a bad mic and bad audio compression
11 years ago
Wicked sweet!
11 years ago
That's really excellent....
If there was a league of mad scientists, you'd be in...
Reply 11 years ago
haha, thanks
11 years ago
You will, of course, be posting a full instructable ...? What was the black tab thingie you stuck to the dome? The sound quality completely hides what you say about it.
Reply 11 years ago
my bad, basically it's just a breakoutpoint (just a nail) attached to the toroid with tape.
11 years ago
SWEET!
11 years ago
Did you get zapped when you held the Nixie up? It looked like you were quickly jerking your hand away....
Reply 11 years ago
maybe... I didn't think you'd notice, haha It kinda hurt for a second...
11 years ago
. That is soooooooo cool! Great job.
11 years ago
Nice
Reply 11 years ago
haha, thanks I just tuned it up a bit more (I think the best with the current primary and stuff, aligator clips arn't the best). Tip to coilers: you can really crank up the streamers by seperating the sparkgap really far apart (almost doesn't work). I know that's common knowledge, but lol.
11 years ago
updated with a video