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How did you get into High voltage electronics

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Dr. SSTC

Sun Jul 06 2008, 11:59AM

Registered Member #1407 Joined: Fri Mar 21 2008, 07:09AM
Location:
Posts: 222

Early today i was trying to remember how i got into high voltage electronics, so im gonna tell you about it.

When i was around 10 years old I disasembeld a BBQ lighter and inside i found a very intresting device, very new to me at that time, I figured it was for igniting the flame, I took it out and started playing with it, and of course shocked my self a few times. After experimenting with it I found a couple thing out; it produces a high voltage pulse, it could light a flourecent tube from a distance, and it caused an intresting plasma, when this got boring i searched the internet for more info and decided to build one of those crappy 2n3055 driver i played with it until i got shocked badly after that i didnt experiment with hv electronics for maybe 2 years, in that time i increased my knoweledge of other electronics fields like variou multivibrators, amps and radios along with a lot more theory . when i was 12 we moved and in my garadge i found my old 2n3055 drive rwhich reinspired me and yea im 15 now now lots about electronics well at least i think.

PLEASE REPLY WITH YOUR STORY ABOUT HOW YOU GOT IN TO HV ELECTRONICS OR EVEN INTO ELECTRNICS AT ALL, I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW WHAT INSPIRED YOU TO DO HV ELECTRONICS

Hon1nbo

Sun Jul 06 2008, 02:03PM

Registered Member #902 Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: Pacific Northwest USA
Posts: 1042

I had always been interested in electronics/technology (and that spread to other sciences [except biology]), but what got me into High Voltage was a catalog for Information Unlimited (amazing1.com) in Fourth Grade, and I saw the tesla coil section and wanted to know about them, so I went to google and typed it in, and learned all about them...
In Fifth Grade I had learned all I needed to know about building them, and my parents allowed me after a teacher at the school I transfered to explained it to them and said he would help me (mainly he just helped me with general knowledge and troubleshooting)... in Freshman year, he allowed me and a few other guys to build a coil at school, and that was the one that when I took it home over the summer almost took out an HDTV... so I have laid off of them for a while
I have received numerous shocks, a small unwanted fire, almost had the garage blow up [parents put a CHARGED pulse transformer with a touchy SIDAC that I was working on in the garage as I went to the bathroom... them were using a heck of a lot of aerosols in there, and I also a few other combustibles...
Over the course of these years I have learned a lot, and I still learn more.

GluD

Sun Jul 06 2008, 08:03PM

Registered Member #1221 Joined: Wed Jan 09 2008, 06:17PM
Location: Odense, Denmark
Posts: 196

I got into electronics cause some morons at my school kept blowing the fuses in the computers PSU by setting it to 110v instead the 220v it gets from the mains, and then this teacher told me how to replace the fuses. And then it just went on from there basicly.

Arcstarter

Mon Jul 07 2008, 12:23AM

Registered Member #1225 Joined: Sat Jan 12 2008, 01:24AM
Location: Beaumont, Texas, USA
Posts: 2253

When i was three i began taking things apart because i was very curious, and sometimes my dad would rig up stuff and i just loved it. One day he showed me these boxes with all kinds of electronics inside, like potentiometers and switches and all of that. The next day, when he came home from work, he was greeted to 3 boxes of missing electronic parts :P. Ever since then i liked to look up different circuits and make them with ic's i got out of old junk, and one day a tripped upon a circuit for driving an ignition coil. It got my interest and i read about what the circuit does and stuff and i got really interested in high voltage. One day i wanted a high voltage power source quite badly :P. A few weeks or months later i found an old air purifier. By that time i had learned about tesla coils and the basic circuit. The purifier thing had three small flybacks and three drivers mounted on the same board. I was very excited as you can imagine. When i was done pulling arcs i decided" hey whay dont i build a tesla coil?". so i made a secondary out of some wire from radioshack with about 100 something feet and a primary out of some insulated wire. I used an old plastic bowl with aluminum foil on either side for capacitor and i turned it on and SPARKS! Awhile after that success i made a single transistor flyback driver and after that i started to make tesla coils.

flannelhead

Mon Jul 07 2008, 07:27PM

Registered Member #952 Joined: Mon Aug 13 2007, 11:07AM
Location: Finland
Posts: 388

This was my introduction to electronics. I got it for Xmas when I was about 10. My dad is a radio ham so it could've been another thing which inspired me to do electronics.

My introduction to HV was a 555+transistor running a small mains transformer backwards. That was meant as an electro-shocker. Man, I nearly pissed in my pants when I touched the output the first time.

Then I started to mess with coilguns and some Google searches led me on this forum. A few months later I signed in. After a while, I started to think "what the heck is a tesla coil, everyone here is talking about them" and I did some googling and some time later I was able to build a small TC powered by my electroshocker circuit

A small CW-multiplier "gun" was my 4HV.org debut project.

Proud Mary

Mon Jul 07 2008, 08:27PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

I started about 1965, when I was 12.

My first apparatus consisted of an ignition coil bought from a scrapyard for a few shillings, a multi-pole Post Office relay, and a waxed paper capacitor taken from a discarded TV.

The relay acted as an interruptor and commutator, and would first charge the capacitor from the 240V mains via a ballast 100W lightbulb, and then discharge it through the coil.

The 12V relay buzzed for all it was worth, fierce arcs formed on the contacts, and the ignition coil produced sparks about an inch long. I learned what ozone smelled like.

My parents quickly linked the terrible radio interference to what I was doing in the shed, and would shout at me to stop it. My mother would sometimes ask if it wasn't dangerous, and I would assure her that it was not!

A friend whose father was a dentist provided some X-ray film, through which we discharged a spark, and I shall never forget the intricate web of patterns that came to light when we developed the image. I could see for myself that there was a lot more to the discharge than what could be seen with the naked eye, and I have remained amazed ever since.

Ken M.

Mon Jul 07 2008, 08:40PM

Registered Member #618 Joined: Sat Mar 31 2007, 04:15AM
Location: Us-Great Lakes
Posts: 628

There is a similar post that was started a while back in the general chat, I started about 6 years ago, I was looking for an interesting electronic device to build in my spare time, came across Sams 2n3055 Flyback driver, made it ran it and was hooked. then a year later I tried making a TC Dr. Shocks minikat one..Mine failed mizerably, then I tried a different one Got it to work but nowhere near as good as one should run, gave up on it for a year, then for my senoir high school project I tryed to make Jans SSTc (don't have the link anymore) that one failed miserably also even with printed circuit boards. Thne finaly I came across this site signed up and made steves Micro coil got it working nicely and even added an audio-mod. THen last summer i made steves Minicoil It worked great, but repeatedly blow up Fets, and now I'm working on steves DRSSTc .5 with 3's driver electronics and a fullbridge.

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