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How to increase the spark length of my tesla coil

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Electrikid221MnM

Sat Oct 29 2011, 06:13PM

Registered Member #4172 Joined: Sat Oct 29 2011, 05:57PM
Location: Narnia
Posts: 27

Hi this is my first post onthe forums. I was wondering if there was a way to boost the spark length?

Dr. Dark Current

Sat Oct 29 2011, 06:28PM

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

Sorry but your question is too general. Please specify your coil type and details, performance, and what you have done to try to increase the spark length.

Electrikid221MnM

Sat Oct 29 2011, 06:34PM

Registered Member #4172 Joined: Sat Oct 29 2011, 05:57PM
Location: Narnia
Posts: 27

SGTC here is the link to my schematic:

The secondary is 500 turns of 28 gauge
and my primary is 23 turns of 14 gauge
my hv power supply is an 8kV 30mA NST
my capacitor bank is just a small leyden jar
my spark gap fires at about 1 mm
the length of the sparks fromthe ssecondary is about 2mm

HDF49

Sat Oct 29 2011, 06:49PM

Registered Member #977 Joined: Thu Aug 30 2007, 06:57PM
Location: England
Posts: 74

put your coil's parameters into javatc and tune it, your primary should be below 15 turns so it looks like there'll be quite a bit of adjustment with the primary capacitor.

Electrikid221MnM

Sat Oct 29 2011, 07:08PM

Registered Member #4172 Joined: Sat Oct 29 2011, 05:57PM
Location: Narnia
Posts: 27

javatc did not work so i think im gonna need some real help

Marko

Sun Oct 30 2011, 05:24PM

Registered Member #89 Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 02:40PM
Location: Zadar, Croatia
Posts: 3145

Hi sir,

Well the first step in increasing the spark length would be starting to use google extensively, and realizing pitfalls of your design such as your TC schematic being completely wrong and getting some basic idea on how it works.

I'm not within this flow anymore but sites like this used to be good places for starters:

I guess your design would go something like this:

- Find a power supply: you already got over this one.
- Find out the right capacitor size for your power supply (google for it).
- Wind a secondary in accordance to your power input/expected spark length. Do it with the thinnest wire you practically can (for this coil size).
- Find out the resonant frequency of your secondary and build a primary in accordance to this. (Wire is ok for a small coil like this, no need to use tube)
- Build a spark gap by soldering some copper tube pieces onto a PCB, and using stacked paper sheets to carefully space them, and use a simple muffin fan to cool it. (don't build the complex TCBOR-style gap)

- Learn about NST protection and design a low pass filter for it (it can be as simple as 2 bottle caps and a stack of resistors).

Questions like this have probably been asked hundreds of times here over and over, and even though the search function of this site sucks you might have luck to run into some of them. In any case there's tons of work in front of you just in research!

Cheers,

Marko

M.A.D.

Mon Oct 31 2011, 03:18AM

Registered Member #4052 Joined: Thu Aug 11 2011, 04:43AM
Location: IN ,USA
Posts: 69

yeah, I looked at your schematic and it has some major ploblems, I am suprised that you got any arcs from this. With this schematic no power is sent through the coil and I would suprised if you are not destroying you NST. there are a LOT of websites that give information on SGTC's. As already mentioned google "spark gap tesla coil' and you will find plenty of info.

Electrikid221MnM

Wed Nov 02 2011, 06:55PM

Registered Member #4172 Joined: Sat Oct 29 2011, 05:57PM
Location: Narnia
Posts: 27

I've actually got the best sparks from that schematic, I'm just wondering if there are any tweaks I could makento the circuit.

Polonium210

Wed Nov 02 2011, 10:30PM

Registered Member #3450 Joined: Sun Nov 28 2010, 05:01AM
Location:
Posts: 61

Electrikid221MnM wrote ...

I've actually got the best sparks from that schematic, I'm just wondering if there are any tweaks I could makento the circuit.

The schematic you used was drawn by me before I had done any research on coiling. It was never meant for anyone to use and has now been taken down from my Flickr photos.
If you want better sparks I would use JavaTC to your advantage. Plug some numbers in and come up with a design from there.

Tetris

Thu Nov 03 2011, 10:51PM

Registered Member #4016 Joined: Thu Jul 21 2011, 01:52AM
Location: Gainesville, FL
Posts: 660

Electrikid221MnM wrote ...

SGTC here is the link to my schematic:

sounds sort of like my own failcoil

what people told me: SG distance is important. cleanliness of windings are important--no crosses in secondary (too late in my case) primary should not look like a 2nd grader wound it (i'll fix this along with next case) and the caps are important too. my caps are also leyden jars. :P waiting on a shipment of real ones. not saying that the leyden jar isnt real.. but you get my drift. I don't have JavaTC, but I think you can torrent it. let me see if I can find torrent link.

Not a torrent. but here:

I am not sure if the link causes direct download... but it works.

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