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Registered Member #2267
Joined: Tue Aug 04 2009, 01:24PM
Location:
Posts: 2
Hi.
I have build my first tesla coil and guess what, it doesn't work.
Transformer is 230/5500 V (current limited). I had secondary N=2090 turns 0.1mm. But it didn't work. Than I made a new one 1111 turns, 0.25mm. A friend gave me some old capacitor, that was laying around, as you can see in the picture 25nF, 15000 VDC. For the grounding of the secondary, I used water pipe. I used static spark gap.
When I turn it on, I only get sparks in the spark gap. I get no streamers on the secondary. Nothing at all. I was changing turns of the primary no success.
Does anybody have any idea? I attached some pictures.
Registered Member #540
Joined: Mon Feb 19 2007, 07:49PM
Location: MIT
Posts: 969
Did you tune the primary's resonant freq to match the secondary's resonant freq? maybe try to increase the coupling between your primary and your secondary?
Registered Member #2267
Joined: Tue Aug 04 2009, 01:24PM
Location:
Posts: 2
I made the smaller one first(last picture) and it didn't work, then I made a new one(first picture). The resonant freq should match. I was also changing turns of the primary circuit. Tomorrow I will experiment forward. I would be happy if I would get sparks 1 cm long. In theory it should work :D
Registered Member #2153
Joined: Wed Jun 03 2009, 03:19PM
Location:
Posts: 69
are you using any software to check your design? Try WinTesla or TeslaMap. If you don't have much experience tesla map will probably be easier to use and make a little more sense. I would highly recommend checking your design with one of these programs though.
Registered Member #135
Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735
It's going to be difficult to get this coil going because you are most likely way out of tune, and are using low power, eg. 15mA or so at 5500V.
I'd say for initial testing, tap midway on your primary and take your foil off the top so you can see if you get any output from the top lead. If not, then move a turn out or turn in, and keep moving around until you see improvement. You won't see much of anything with this setup, but you will get what you get.
Spark gap: maybe 1/8" open max. Just make sure its buzzing. Low voltage is kinda a pain to deal with. One of my early coils was a 7500V system and I had some trouble with the gap here.
This coil probably isn't going to do much with that top load. I'd say after you can see some sparks and get a feel for what it does, make a little 12" diameter toroid for it.
You're not really going to get streamers from something this small. You need to put a breakout point on the discharge surface and actually get your ground electrode in proximity to see a discharge. If you had a lot more power then you could expect some streamers out.
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non working tesla coil
