If you need assistance, please send an email to forum at 4hv dot org. To ensure your email is not marked as spam, please include the phrase "4hv help" in the subject line. You can also find assistance via IRC, at irc.shadowworld.net, room #hvcomm.
Support 4hv.org!
Donate:
4hv.org is hosted on a dedicated server. Unfortunately, this server costs and we rely on the help of site members to keep 4hv.org running. Please consider donating. We will place your name on the thanks list and you'll be helping to keep 4hv.org alive and free for everyone. Members whose names appear in red bold have donated recently. Green bold denotes those who have recently donated to keep the server carbon neutral.
Special Thanks To:
Aaron Holmes
Aaron Wheeler
Adam Horden
Alan Scrimgeour
Andre
Andrew Haynes
Anonymous000
asabase
Austin Weil
barney
Barry
Bert Hickman
Bill Kukowski
Blitzorn
Brandon Paradelas
Bruce Bowling
BubeeMike
Byong Park
Cesiumsponge
Chris F.
Chris Hooper
Corey Worthington
Derek Woodroffe
Dalus
Dan Strother
Daniel Davis
Daniel Uhrenholt
datasheetarchive
Dave Billington
Dave Marshall
David F.
Dennis Rogers
drelectrix
Dr. John Gudenas
Dr. Spark
E.TexasTesla
eastvoltresearch
Eirik Taylor
Erik Dyakov
Erlend^SE
Finn Hammer
Firebug24k
GalliumMan
Gary Peterson
George Slade
GhostNull
Gordon Mcknight
Graham Armitage
Grant
GreySoul
Henry H
IamSmooth
In memory of Leo Powning
Jacob Cash
James Howells
James Pawson
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Thomas
Jesse Frost
Jim Mitchell
jlr134
Joe Mastroianni
John Forcina
John Oberg
John Willcutt
Jon Newcomb
klugesmith
Leslie Wright
Lutz Hoffman
Mads Barnkob
Martin King
Mats Karlsson
Matt Gibson
Matthew Guidry
mbd
Michael D'Angelo
Mikkel
mileswaldron
mister_rf
Neil Foster
Nick de Smith
Nick Soroka
nicklenorp
Nik
Norman Stanley
Patrick Coleman
Paul Brodie
Paul Jordan
Paul Montgomery
Ped
Peter Krogen
Peter Terren
PhilGood
Richard Feldman
Robert Bush
Royce Bailey
Scott Fusare
Scott Newman
smiffy
Stella
Steven Busic
Steve Conner
Steve Jones
Steve Ward
Sulaiman
Thomas Coyle
Thomas A. Wallace
Thomas W
Timo
Torch
Ulf Jonsson
vasil
Vaxian
vladi mazzilli
wastehl
Weston
William Kim
William N.
William Stehl
Wesley Venis
The aforementioned have contributed financially to the continuing triumph of 4hv.org. They are deserving of my most heartfelt thanks.
Registered Member #227
Joined: Mon Feb 20 2006, 10:47PM
Location: Cambridge Ontario, Canada!!
Posts: 127
Yes I did use a Jig like my previous sec. But this one took longer because I had kept messing up. I restarted I think 3 times. And I had my annoying 9-year-old in my shop..."whats this? Hows this work? can you make me one of those? whats this? Ow! that hurt!.ect etc..." So It was quite an annoyance. About the turn ratio I just re-measured and the lenth is 24 inches. Still not a good ratio at 12:1 but its better than 16:1... But now I only have 900 turns, I was hoping for 1200 but I guess I cut wrong, woops.
Also I've heard that the best angle for a primary is 35 deg? Is this right?
Registered Member #341
Joined: Thu Mar 23 2006, 07:41PM
Location: Northern Illinois, USA
Posts: 69
This is my first post to this or any other HV forum. I wanted to build a Tesla coil for 35 years but never got around to it. Becoming unemployed eliminated my last excuse to procrastinate any longer. I have very little electronics background, but the wealth of information that I found on the threads of this site and others (often the same people posting) provided me the knowledge to finally achieve that goal. For that I would like to say thank you.
I use a 4 MOT power supply that is ballasted with a fifth MOT with the secondary shorted, this setup pops a 15amp breaker with some regularity. The relative low voltage of the MOTs required a very narrow gap. After looking at all of the ingenious designs for gaps, I settled on a variation of the “sucker gap†design. I didn’t like the idea of a shop vac for several reasons. The terrible noise is just irritating, plus all the wind blows the streamers around. But the biggest problem is sucking the heat and gases from the arc into the plumbing causing the gap to heat unnecessarily. I just happened to have a little squirrel cage blower from one of the microwaves that I salvaged the transformer from and so I built what I guess can only be described as a blow-gap.
All parts with the exception of the blower were obtained at a home supply store and consists of copper grounding clamps, schedule 40 PVC and .75†hard copper. I intend to change to 1†copper at some point, but at this power level the .75†seems to work just fine and is priced right.
In use, the gap hisses like an arc welder and looks like gas-stove burner (when viewed from the end along the axis of the pipe electrodes. One pipe gets warm and the other gets hot, like a candle flame. You can touch it, but only for a moment. It has never to my knowledge melted the solder that holds it together. My longest continuous run is twelve minutes and it was the ballast that was smoking, not the gap. I have done dozens and dozens of 5-6 minute runs and it’s always the ballast that shuts things down. I have now placed the ballast in oil.
When it’s really cold (my coil is on my unheated porch in far North Central Illinois) I sometimes have to let the gap power arc for a few moments before turning on the blower. This allows the pipe to heat up to working temperature and narrows the gap to the proper setting. Otherwise the coil will run in a very sporadic manner, but once the gap comes up to temperature and the blower is turned on, the coil roars.
Registered Member #229
Joined: Tue Feb 21 2006, 07:33PM
Location: Romania
Posts: 506
Nice spark gap ArcLight, and good idea. The shop vacs and the vacuum cleaners motors are surely very noisy, it is very hard to run them in an apartment for example. Benguy has to build his gap with the materials he has around though....
This site is powered by e107, which is released under the GNU GPL License. All work on this site, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. By submitting any information to this site, you agree that anything submitted will be so licensed. Please read our Disclaimer and Policies page for information on your rights and responsibilities regarding this site.