Tabletop Tesla Coil
I built this little guy today.
It works pretty good considering it was built in less than 6 hrs, and being poorly tuned. I tossed it together with junk I had around. Nothing was calculated or measured. Arcs are about 5-6" so far
The secondary diameter is smaller than a quarter. I just wrapped ~33awg magnet wire around a piece of PVC pipe until I felt satisfied with its height. The solid copper primary sits upon some ceramic insulators salvaged from an old runway strobe. The box is some 3M marketing shwag. The transformer is a 10kv that I found in a box of junk from an auction long ago. Not sure on the current, probably about 10-20ma. The tank cap is a Sprague 4nf doorknob. An acrylic box from Ikea, with 2 carriage bolts makes up the sparkgap. I'm running it though a variac, and found the cap begins to fail around 80v input, so it needs a better cap. Topload for now is a tennis ball wrapped in aluminum foil. Not much else to it.
Here's a vid:
6 comments on “Tabletop Tesla Coil”
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Have you been able to make it play any songs?
You need a better soldering iron, get yourself a Lutola or ZDZ one, they’re awesome
http://www.lutola.pl/L6C_lutownica_transformatorowa.php
http://www.tme.eu/pl/details/lt-75/lutownice-grzalkowe-i-transformatorowe/zdz/
@iomop I have a better pencil iron. This cheap one works fine for 1/8″ solid copper.
A schematic for the electric parts would be awesome. Thanks.
The schematic is just a basic spark gap tesla coil, like this one: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/imagenes_tesla/tesla17_03.gif
I built one of those…bit bigger though. I found putting a 120v muffin fan in front of the spark gap makes for a great air quencher.