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PhilGood

Sun Apr 03 2011, 08:53AM

Registered Member #3806 Joined: Sat Apr 02 2011, 09:20PM
Location: France
Posts: 259

Hi all , this is my 1st post ont this great forum, hope itâ€™s the right place to post itâ€¦

my name is Philippe, and I live in south-east France

Itâ€™s now a few weeks Iâ€™m spending hours everyday reading all HV related websites, and Iâ€™m really interested in this hobby and willing to experiment whit all this stuffâ€¦

Iâ€™m really impressed with the awesome projects done by 4hv members

congratulations to all of you !

Now I have some very basic knowledge in electricity and electronics,

But I have a real lack of experience with High Voltages and High Frequencies

, so Iâ€™ll probly have a lot of questions, hope some of you will be able to help me start with thatâ€¦

Letâ€™s start with a few ones :

1) NEIGHBORS AND RF GROUND

I live on the 7th floor of a big building, with a very large terrace. For everything that must be ran outside, Iâ€™ll have to avoid too noisy projects.

And what about a proper RF ground being on the 7th floor ?

Hopefully I am mainly willing to build small devices, but as much powerful and compact as possible. As for example Iâ€™ve been really impressed by this small TC from powerlabs which fires sparks twice the height of the secondary (50cm sparks for a 25cm secondary height!) with only 270W !

I have also seen in many videos small TC devices running inside where some coilers just connect the bottom of the secondary to the inner end of the primary and all that is connected the the mains ground â€¦ I know this is not recommended at all and even dangerous. What do you think of this ?

2) WHAT TO START WITH ?

Well, except basic tools and few things like 2 Metrix multimeters (analog and digital) , a 13.5V 7A PSU, a car battery with charger, I have none of the needed mats and components so Iâ€™m almost starting from scratch and will have to find/buy everything needed â€¦

Iâ€™ll probably need your advices about what and where to buy â€¦ It seems that in France, some parts/components are harder to find than in UK/US, so if any of you is living in France Iâ€™d be really interested with some good french suppliers

Iâ€™m planning to make my first experiments with Ignition Coils (as they are cheap and quite robust) before I switch to something more ambitious like my 1st TC

I found something that seems very interesting to me :

OCXI Power Pulse Modulator from RMCybernetics
Rated 9A 400V and freq up to 1.5 MHz , Duty Cycle 0% to 100% (for Â£43, seems fair price)

But reading thru this forum Iâ€™ve seen many ppl had problems with burning driver circuits when powering ignition coils â€¦

So my idea is use this unit only as a signal generator (with all needed protections) to drive my own power stages and ensure I wonâ€™t damage the unit itself, if I burn my home made power stages itâ€™s not a big deal, Iâ€™ll just build a better oneâ€¦ What do you think about this idea ?

Well thanks a lot in advance for any feedback, suggestions and help, and Iâ€™m back to reading the forum, every new thread I learn many interesting things â€¦

See ya soon there

PS: Sorry for my poor English (not my native language

)

Edit:

As I had many questions (and many more to come) that could be confusing in a single thread, I made a distinct thread in the appropriate forum for each question. I think that will make things easier... here they are:

RF ground on 7th floor ?

Which EMI/RFI filter should I choose?

Your opinion about this multi-purpose driver

pls Need advice to buy appropriate NST

Xray

Mon Apr 04 2011, 07:55PM

Registered Member #3429 Joined: Sun Nov 21 2010, 02:04AM
Location: Minnesota, USA
Posts: 288

Hi PhilGood -- Welcome to the 4hv forum! I am a fairly new member too (joined a little over 4 months ago).

First off, don't worry about your English skills. Your grammar and sentence structure is much better than many people I know who are U.S. citizens!

My only comment is about your concern with "noise" in your building where you live. I'm not sure if you are referring to audible noise or electrical noise. When playing with certain high voltage "toys" (such as a Tesla Coil) then you need to be concerned about both, and even a few other things. Tesla Coils are notorious EMI generators. When operating them, they often wipe out TV and radio reception in your entire neighborhood. It's not as bad a problem for TV's operating on cable systems, but the ones that use a rooftop antenna or indoor "rabbit ears", reception will be nearly impossible, and you may get complaints from your neighbors. Many high voltage devices also generate ozone gas, which is corrosive and also toxic to your health. So, make sure that you operate any hv equipment with plenty of ventilation. It's extremely difficult to mitigate electrical noise generated by a Tesla Coil, especially when your neighbors are located in the same building, and using the same electrical mains as you are. It might be a good idea to explain to them what you are doing, and to ask them what time of day or night they are watching TV or listening to the radio. You might end up with a very narrow time slot that you can operate your Tesla coil, and it might be 3 or 4 O' Clock in the morning!!! But then, of course, you need to some how mitigate the audible noise, which is also challenging, but much easier than trying to mitigate the electrical noise!

That's all I have to say. Maybe other guys will chime in and answer some of your questions too.

Good luck, and keep posting!

James

Mon Apr 04 2011, 09:00PM

Registered Member #3610 Joined: Thu Jan 13 2011, 03:29AM
Location: Seattle, WA
Posts: 506

Welcome aboard.

If you can find old television sets or CRT computer monitors they can be a goldmine of useful parts. Automotive salvage yards are a good source as well, mostly ignition coils. Microwave ovens are another good source of parts. The fan motors are suitable to drive a Van de Graffe generator, or can be disassembled to recover hundreds of feet of magnet wire to wind your own coils. The (very dangerous!) HV transformer is good for various things and there are many other usable parts. Solenoids are another good source of enameled wire as they can often be picked up for very little and unwound easily.

PhilGood

Wed Apr 06 2011, 01:02PM

Registered Member #3806 Joined: Sat Apr 02 2011, 09:20PM
Location: France
Posts: 259

Thanks Xray and James for your welcome and precious advices

Neighbors concerns:

Here is were I live:

There are more than 100 appartments in this building and ppl living there are not the kind willing to know and to sympathize with each other

So I guess my best chance is that no one notices what I'm doing !

Audible noise : anything reasonable but a bit noisy could be ran inside my living room (walls are thick enough so that noone will notice it). I think ozone shouldn't be a problem with short runs and opening windows right after.

RF noise: here's my main problem I think. Living 7th floors above "real" ground (and many ppl), I'll have to be very careful with EMI I could feed back into the building's mains network. Any suggestion on a good mains EMI filter + some RF ground solutions are welcomed here.

Anyway, concerning Radio/TV interferences I myself have an indoor TV antenna so I'll quickly notice any trouble

Free HV parts:

Hopfully it's quite usual when driving around the town past 10pm to see some old TV's or MO's that ppl just left on the pavemnt. I'll try to grab a few of them, thanks for the advice .
_____

Well that was my introductory post with the first questions that came to my mind, I'm actually trying to figure out what I can reasonably do and what I should avoid...

I think I'll start a seperate thread for each new question I have, that'll make things easier...

Thanks again for everyone's answers and suggestions

radhoo

Wed Apr 06 2011, 01:42PM

Registered Member #1938 Joined: Sun Jan 25 2009, 12:44PM
Location: Romania
Posts: 701

PhilGood, welcome to the forum, and thanks for reminding me how beautiful the <CÃ´te d'Azur> was, with that pic of yours.

PhilGood

Wed Apr 06 2011, 02:50PM

Registered Member #3806 Joined: Sat Apr 02 2011, 09:20PM
Location: France
Posts: 259

Thanks radhoo for the friendly welcome

Here's one more shoot from my terrace for you (panoramic overlap is a bit wrong, but I had full sun on my screen and wasn't able to see anything :p)

PS: sry for the OT.
_____________________________________

Edit :

Please see first post edited, links added to different questions

Thanks a lot

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