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Speaking of electricity... | by Viaken | 2003-07-10 04:40:03 |
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Someone needs to discover how easy a Tesla coil | by myke | 2003-07-10 04:50:55 |
| i made one for my physics class in h.s. |
by chamcham |
2003-07-10 06:02:09 |
Materials:
-neon sign transformer that runs > 10kvolts for decent performance.
-3-5feet of 1/4" copper tubing (refrigerator tubing) for primary coil
-~10feet of a heavy guage wire, like 12ga, braided is fine here
-3ft of 2" pvc pipe and an end cap for the top.
-100 feet or so of a small guage insulated wire(solid not braid), 29-32guage for winding around the pvc pipe
-11 glass panes 12"x12"
-1 roll of metal flashing
-4x3 sheet of plywood to mount everything to
-2 'L' brackets about 2" in size
-4 screws to mount the brackets to the plywood
-5 2" long brass bolts that will fit throug hthe L-bracket and 4nuts and 2 washers for each
-a few rolls of electrical tape
cut the metal flashing into ten 10"x10" squares with a 1 1/2" wide by 2 1/2" long tab (so it sticks out 2 1/2" from the main 10x10 part)
make a capacitor out of the glass and flashing by alternating pieces of flashing with glass. make the tabs face in opposite directions for every other piece (i.e. glass , tab left, glass, tab right, glass, tab left, glass, .... , glass, tab right, glass). eletrical tape the hell out of this thing to hold everything in place.
use a clamp to smash the 5 tabs on each side together and drill a hole throug hthe middle of all of them and use one of the brass bolts and a nut to hold them together, these are your capcitors terminals
next, make a 4" diameter coil with 5 turns (1/2" - 1" between turns) out of the copper tubing
then, with the pvc, the endcap, a brass bolt, and the 28-32 guage wire. drill a hole in the center of the endcap for one of the brass bolts and use a nut to hold it in place. Now at the opposite end of the pvc start winding the wire around the pipe keeping your winds very tight. be sure to leave about 2" of wire at the bottom in case you need to attach this piece to a ground (not sure if it connects to ground or not, but i believe it does). When you get to the top of the pvc pipe attach the wire to the brass bolt. It helps to tape the wire on the pipe every few inches so if you get tired you can come back to it and your winds won't come undone.
after that, fix the 2 L-brackets onto the plywood about 2" apart and facing each other (i.e. _| |_ ) and place a bolt in the top hole of each L bracket and leave a 1/4" gap between them (to start out with)
next start attaching wires, left terminal of the transformer to left term on capcitor, right terminal to right side. take a wire from the left terminal of the capacitor to one end of the spark gap, and the other end of the spark gap will connect to the top of the copper coil. the left term on the capcitor will connect to the bottom of the copper coil. use the extra nuts and washers to attach wires.
place the 3" pipe in the middle of the coil ( i used a 2 to 4 pvc bushing as a base plate to make it free standing ) and turn your death trap on. if all goes well you'll hear a very loud noise -- the spark gap. if your spark gap isn't working but you still here this noise, then your capcitor is probably shorting somewhere (turn out the lights to see something pretty!). just adjust the spacing in the spark gap til this goes away mostly or all together.
sure there are less 'ghetto' ways to make a tesla coil, but this keeps a budget in mind. that, and it was a half-assed highschool project to keep me out of doing a 20page research paper. also, the 5yrs that has passed since i made this might mean i left out some important details, so it would be wise to check into the design further.
also, don't play with electrons if you don't want to get shocked/burned/scar'd/dead.
that said, enjoy! |
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