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loneoceans

Tue Oct 01 2013, 02:49PM

Registered Member #4098 Joined: Fri Sept 16 2011, 09:26PM
Location:
Posts: 236

Hi everyone!

Presenting my DRSSTC 2. This was built in the spring of 2013 and the project started with the goal of making my first tesla coil using brick-style IGBTs.

Schematics and Construction Details etc are on my website:

And here are the photos of it in action:

8731596738 Cac8608421 C

First Version

The project began when I bought two Toshiba IGBT half-bridge modules on ebay, good for 150A 600V. The original plan was to build a compact and powerful DRSSTC running this full bridge, with about a foot long secondary. The coil also uses a revised version of Steve Wardâ€™s UD2 as the driver. After many months of work, I finally got everything put together. Unfortunately, initial tests were worrying, and I soon found out that one of my IGBTs was half-dead. With the lack of time and money, I wasnâ€™t able to continue with these bricks.

Revision 2

I managed to get hold of a CM200DU-24F 200A 1200V IGBT and decided to make a half-bridge coil instead. The CM200 bricks are larger, so I wasnâ€™t able to fit a fullbridge inside the box I had already made. Finally, this worked perfectly and everything came together.

Specifications:

- CM200DU-24F 1200V 200A Half Bridge IGBT, RTC disabled
- 1875uF 350VDC Bus Capacitor x2 in series (voltage doubler)
- 0.154uF (measured) 8kVDC MMC made of CDE 942C capacitors
- Flat Spiral Primary, 0.25" Copper Tubing, 9 turns tapped at 8 for 108kHz
- 13 x 3.5" Secondary, AWG 34, ~2050 turns
- 4" x 17" Toroid, Aluminium Ducting
- 110kHz resonant frequency calculated (secondary)
- 10-150us pulse-width time, controlled via optical input
- Designed for 240VAC input max for 678VDC on the bus (half bridge)
- Spark length - almost 5 feet to air at 208VAC input
- Ground strikes - >51" recorded (keeps wanting to hit the floor!)

Here's a video of a quick test of it running. Need to find a new larger space.

It has been a great learning experience and I would like to thank the members of the 4hv community especially Steve and Phillip for their great advice and help! Without their help, this project would not have been so successful.

More to come soon with possibly a spun toroid to top it off.

loneoceans

Tue Oct 01 2013, 03:11PM

Registered Member #4098 Joined: Fri Sept 16 2011, 09:26PM
Location:
Posts: 236

Introducing my first DRSSTC. Itâ€™s a small tesla coil made to be portable, and also plays music!. Overall, the project was a success and was a great learning experience. This coil was built in early 2013.

Website with more details here:

As a learning experience, I wanted to go for something simple and nothing too fancy. Iâ€™ve had the fortune of being in the good company of other brilliant coilers (like Bayley, Tyler, Kramnik), and managed to get an older version of the oneTesla driver PCB, which runs this coil! I faced a couple of problems while building the coil but Iâ€™ve modified some parts and managed to get the coil working very well! Many thanks to Bayley for advice and help to get it working. See the video of it in action here:

Important specifications including calcs from JavaTC:
- Max spark length â€“ I donâ€™t know yet, does >22â€³ sparks to free air and ground with ~100us on-time.
- 222kHz resonant frequency (within 1%)
- 2.4â€³ Diameter PVC Secondary, ~2000 turns of AWG36 for a 10.25â€³ length
- 3.5â€³ Diameter Acrylic Primary, 6 turns of AWG 14 for about 0.8â€³ length
- Single 0.101uF 2kVDC 942C CDE Primary Capacitor
- 340VDC (120VAC rectified and doubled)
- Roughly 100us on-time (in the photos here)
- 2.2â€³ x 8â€³ AmazingOne spun toroid
- Half Bridge of 60N65 IGBTs (seems to be similar to the 60N60 TO247 IGBTs)
- Coupling = 0.22
- Energy Transfer time = 9.87us

8541493944 Fe76f78891 Z

Performance has been pretty good. Originally, the coil used a 0.068uF 940C capacitor but that made my primary frequency about 19% too high and I lost a 60N60 half bridge. Increasing the primary to 8 turns of 14AWG (k=0.26) turned out to be a bad idea and I had a lot of racing sparks. After a few more coats of Polyurethane on the secondary, a return to 6 turns of AWG14 and a larger tank cap, the coil is in tune with a performance Iâ€™m very happy with.

This coil currently has a tiny built-in 19VDC laptop power supply for the electronics which uses the famed UCCs from TI as gate drivers to a GDT driving the gates of the IGBTs.

Dr. Dark Current

Wed Oct 02 2013, 07:12PM

Registered Member #152 Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384

7KW (SR)SSTC

-fullwave unfiltered, non-interrupted operation ("near-CW"), switchable to half-wave rectification
-16 X 72 cm winding secondary, 0.28 mm wire, 80 kHz resonance
-SKM100GB125DN brick fullbridge
-PLL self tuning driver with exact phase lock (integrator in the loop filter), has no problems with short ground arcs
-400VAC 50Hz input, power factor near 1 (full wave operation)

Here are some photos from Czech Teslathon and a video from my garage. Sadly I have no more media available and the coil got somewhat screwed on the teslathon (occasional pri-sec arcovers after switch on (bad soft start) cooked the primary, slightly overheated secondary and to finish it someone stepped on my toroid), so it is now in non-operational state.

GreenLab

Fri Nov 15 2013, 09:54AM

Registered Member #3047 Joined: Thu Jul 29 2010, 10:56PM
Location: Germany
Posts: 12

Hello,
I rebuilt my 2 kVA medium tesla coil.
Now she has a new 3000RPM SRSG, a phaseshifter and a welded 19 " aluminum toroid.

Here are some pictures and a video. :)

greets, GreenLab

Bumblebee

Sun Nov 17 2013, 11:27PM

Registered Member #39560 Joined: Fri Nov 01 2013, 11:45AM
Location: Village of the Damned, Hertfordshire
Posts: 3

This is my small flyback powered tesla coil that I knocked up in my shed. Seems a bit pitiful compared to some of the beasts in this thread, but it is my first attempt and it works!

Spec.

Full-wave rectified flyback with potted strings of fast recovery diodes. Mazilli ZVS driver (modified with 15V zeners, 2uF cap) 25V 10A supply.
Primary of 3/16" copper brakepipe from Halfords, tapped at 13 turns.
3.3 nF tank cap - 2 strings of 20 WIMA FKP1 33nF 2000V dc 700V ac
Spark gap: 5 sections 15mm copper pipe with hairdryer fan sucking air through. 3 x 1.5mm + 1 adjustable gap.
Secondary 920 turns 30 SWG (0.315mm) on 68mm white pvc drainpipe (from B&Q) discs epoxed top and bottom
Topload: 250mm x 67mm toroid (polystyrene wreath former from craft store wrapped with aluminium tape)
RF ground - mains earth with 100nF coupling capacitors to live and neutral to make noise common-mode

http://youtu.be/9GqGMwXYSEo

MrFlatox

Sun Dec 15 2013, 02:26PM

Registered Member #9349 Joined: Mon Jan 07 2013, 08:50AM
Location: France
Posts: 102

Hi,
This is my first tesla coil, in its ARSG flavour :

specs
-power supply : 2 MOTs in series unfiltered, unrectified with no ballast
-primay tank : MMC based on 942c caps, 7s7p which gives 14kv and 150nF
-primay coil : 14mm copper tubing tapped at 4.75 turns
-rotary spark gap : angle grinder with 8 moving electrodes. break rate is adjustable from 150BPS to 310BPS
-secondary coil : 125mm diameter, 52cm length, 1050 turns of 0.45mm copper wire
-secondary tank : 2 toroids made from aluminium ducting, 125mm tore diameter, 600mm outside diameter.

measured resonance frequency is 165kHz
It draws 16 Amps @240V.

Maximum strike length to a grounded target is 170cm point to point, more than 3 times the secondary winding length.

DerStrom8

Mon Jun 30 2014, 05:35PM

Registered Member #3704 Joined: Sun Feb 20 2011, 01:13PM
Location: Vermont, U.S.A.
Posts: 92

Hi folks, just noticed this thread so I thought I'd post my first ever Tesla coil. Technically it's the second, but the first was not very impressive and I scrapped it. You can see it in the background of the videos.

Anyway, affectionately named "Mini Max", this was my first Tesla coil that I considered a success. It's about 300 turns of 28AWG wire around a toilet paper tube. Primary is about 6 turns of solid copper 12AWG house wire, and I am using a single beer bottle capacitor that provides roughly 0.5nF of capacitance. The coil is driven by a 9kv 60mA NST.

Video without topload:

Video with topload (1" steel ball bearing):

The coil stands about 4" tall and the arc is about 3-4" long. It was thrown together with junk I had lying around, so please excuse the crudity of the construction.

Maurizio Valvo

Fri Aug 15 2014, 12:07PM

Registered Member #3219 Joined: Mon Sept 20 2010, 09:06PM
Location: LeinÃ¬ (Turin), Italy
Posts: 23

Hi, I started this project in 2008 but, due to the scarce time I could dedicate to it, I have not yet finished experimenting and
improving it. However I think it is in a sufficiently good and stable shape now. This is my first and only (up to now ...) Tesla coil.

Main specs:
Full bridge DRSSTC, mainly based on Steve Ward's design (old driver, no phase lead)
Bridge silicon: IXGR60N60C2D1 IGBTs, ISOPLUS247 (similar to TO247 but with isolated tab), 600V, Icm=300A
MMC: series of 5x 0.47uF-2kV WIMA FKP snubber caps, total (measured) 92.9nF-10kV
Secondary: 11x61cm, AWG28, measured 51.5mH
Primary: 7 turns of 6mm copper tube, conic 45 degrees, tapped in the last half turn
Toroid: 50x10cm, aluminium duct
Bus cap: 3200uF-350V (will be replaced soon by 1x or 2x 6800uF-400V)
Bus voltage: rectified 230V mains, i.e. up to about 300Vdc
Primary current peaks at around 110kHz and 127kHz (measured via FFT of scope samples)

Performance (up to now ...): 120cm sparks to grounded rod with OCD limiting to 450A

The secondary coil height relative to the primary coil (i.e. the coupling) can be varied quickly thanks to a particular mounting mechanism (I think this is quite original): the secondary coil form can be moved vertically by turning an M16 threaded nylon rod; to prevent rotation of the coil form I cut three slots at its base, slots in which three corresponding teeth of the primary supporting base wedge (I think this is more clear looking at the drawing below). Also the toroid is mounted on a similar threaded rod to adjust easily its height with respect to the secondary coil.

If anyone wants to replicate this mechanism, I suggest instead to cut the slots in the main base and apply guiding laths onto the coil form; this because cutting the slots in the coil form is quite difficult and the form itself tends to shrink after cutting. Obviously, one can also easily motorize this movement ...

More pictures can be seen here

Credits: I am very grateful expecially to S.Ward, S.Conner, R.Burnett, P.Slawinkski, D.McCauley, T. Fritz, A.C. de Queiroz and many others that shared lots of information through the 4HV forum and also through their individual sites, helping people like me to learn TC theory and develop a successful project.

chris_inkubate

Sun Aug 17 2014, 09:57PM

Registered Member #46007 Joined: Wed Apr 30 2014, 08:02PM
Location: Walsall, UK
Posts: 36

I have now upgraded all of the electronics, capacitors and toroid on my tesla coil making a big difference in performance:

Full bridge using two Littelfuse MG06400D-BN1MM half bridge bricks
352nF tank made Cornell Dubilier 942Cs
Secondary 150mm x 610mm winding
58cm toroid made with 9cm alu ducting
4700uf 450V bus cap
OCD currently at 800A on UD2.5

Coil now giving 5ft streamers but know this can be optimised more as tuning needs some minor work. I'm limited however by the room size - arcs now hitting walls. I'm also running in an apartment on mains ground so pushing my luck already!

1460837105 46007 FT1630 Img 20160416 200954595

1460837105 46007 FT1630 Img 20160416 201004216

Teodor Zafiroski

Thu Mar 26 2015, 06:34PM

Registered Member #48007 Joined: Wed Jun 18 2014, 01:00PM
Location: Prilep, Republic of Macedonia
Posts: 33

Here is my hybrid Tesla coil. I call it the RDTC (Relay Driven Tesla Coil). Instead of a spark gap, it uses a relay with NO contacts in self-oscillating mode to act as a spark gap, it runs directly on 230VAC from an european outlet. Here are some images, It gives 8.5cm sparks with 40W in, and 7cm sparks with 25W in. Here are some images:

FVrlUJL

Here are the build details:

The results were quite good for the overall cost of the project, which was about 35USD...

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