The first topload design… The first topload sitting atop of my coil, it will eventually be smoothed out with aluminium foil tape. I have now added the strike rail above the primary coil to give a bit more protection against stray arcs. The secondary coil can be raised about 35mm … Continue reading…
Four 470pF 20kV 60kVAr Capacitors, connected in parallel for a total value of 1880pF. They are quite large, the total length of the unit is around 420mm and weighs around 2kg ! I have connected them with 25mm x 1.5mm aluminium strips, hopefully they will be big enough for the … Continue reading…
It was cold, damp and trying to rain, perfect weather for mucking about with high voltages outdoors ! So it was on with the warm clothing and out into the garden. Due to the unpredictable nature of an untested Tesla Coil, you can’t really test it indoors because of the … Continue reading…
I am using the same control box that was built for my spark gap coil as it was well built and can handle the current easily.
The weather was not much better than it was when I first tested my coil, I joined it all together again, retreated to my newly finished control box and pressed the ‘go’ button. Nothing happened ! After a bit of head scratching, I realised I had wired it up a … Continue reading…
After a bit of reasearch and a few more inter-club-member emails, I tried tuning my coil with an oscilloscope and signal generator to see if it made any difference to the output. The theory is to measure the resonant frequency of the secondary coil and topload and then, using this … Continue reading…