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My toriod is made from aluminum drain pipe.
Located at your local ACE distributor. I guestamate that it is about 18 pf.
The secondary is 3 inch PVC rapped with 512 turns of 28 awg magnet wire. Its about 16
inches long. I placed another 4 in PVC pipe around it. I filled the space with
epoxy. Primary was 5 turns of 6 awg wire. Commercial capacitor rated at
100 Kv 0.01 uf. I used a motor to help me wind the secondary. I used a coffee
straw to wind fishing line and magnet wire around the secondary. This way each turn
of magnet wire would be spaced by fishing line. I had planed on making sparks
several times the length of the coil. Now I know that the insulation on the
magnet wire was good enough. All I did was reduce the inductance. |
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My rotary spark gap is made from a old pump
motor(1,760 rpms), wood, and a used poly cutting board. The electrodes are steal
bolts and nuts. Poly cement was placed on the threads to help prevent it from coming
apart. The base is wood. Be careful when using wood. It has a none
uniform dielectric strength. I used a drum from part of a fan to connect the axle
and poly. There are two stationary electrodes connected to the wood. I ended
up trashing this before I tested it. That's life. |
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This is me with my first ever coil. :) I
didn't know it at the time but I was way out of tune. I was using a home made
capacitor. It was made out of plexie glass and aluminum foil. I laid foam
insulation on top of it and a heavy object to keep it compressed. My spark gap was
crude then. It was only made out of two steal bolts. The sphere on top of my
secondary is a styrofoam ball covered with thin aluminum foil. My primary was folded
aluminum foil. Man, did I have a lot to learn. This picture was taken in my so
called lab. The lab is more like Erik's depo. |
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I ended up getting 16 inch streamers with this
coil. I am still using the same power supply, as in the above picture, but now I am
using 6 awg wire for my primary and I built a new and smaller capacitor. I had a
shirt laying in my lab folded for three months. When I finally cleaned out my
lab. Half of my shirt was blue and the other half was very light blue. I think
it was faded by the ultra violet light from the tesla coil's discharge. Now that I
look back I see all kinds of mistakes I made. I think the main reason for small
sparks was poor quenching. |
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This is not a reflection. Its four salad
bowls. Notice how the like charges push each other away. |