Tesla Coils

Has any CD posters ever built a Tesla Coil? Im going to build one this summer as a "summer project"

Do any of you have any suggestions for materials, or anything else

Yeah I know "Tesla Coils arent toys and they will Kill"

Any viewers dont know what a Tesla Coil is?
http://www.monmouth.com/~grimcorona/

and see attached Pic

[David Kelly]

are you sure you wanna be doing this dj? i've heard some stories about you, and.... well, nevermind

[Zeinin]

i did

i will tell you about it at nats, if you care

Originally posted by David Kelly
are you sure you wanna be doing this dj? i've heard some stories about you, and.... well, nevermind

Uh i dont know what your talking about...

[David Kelly]

you wish dj, lets have clark post here with all your mishaps you have had

I can count my mishaps with 1 hand

[Jon Lawton]

I tried to do this a few years ago, but didn't meet with much sucess. A few things I learned:

-What you use to discharge at the top of your coil is very important! It is acting as half of a cap (the discharge torroid, sphere, whatever, and the Earth).
-Run a "low" voltage through the primary, and hook the output of the secondary up to an osciliscope. Adjust either your capacitance or inductance to hit resonance.

I'm sure there were other things I that found out but I think those were the big ones. If you look around you can find some neat programs to help you design your coil. "WinTesla" comes to mind. If I find it laying around I'll send it your way.

Best of luck to you!

[DanL]

Bah! Tesla coils! If I were you, I'd spend your time and money building and perfecting the ultimate potatoe canno - er... potatoe accelerator. My goal this summer is to build a pnumatic one, preferably one with a barrel capable of shooting a coke bottle. But thats gonna take some time and experermintation. But don't worry, I don't plan to use it to fire chlorine bombs... maybe bottles filled with water or glowstick innards

[Ian W.]

LOL!! Dan, when you do make this "Soda-Bottle Accelorator, please let me know so I can play with it too! You're gona need a lot of big PVC or ABS (i think it might be better for pneumatic).

[Joe Matt]

Nice knowing you Fluck....

[Greg McCoy]

If we start having brownouts in Kokomo we'll know where they are coming from...

[Keith Chester]

1) glowstick innards are toxic, almost as bad as chlorine.
2) lemme see the plans for teh cannon :-)
3) lemme see the ideas you have for the tesla coil dj.

[DanL]

They're toxic?! hmm, that could be a small problem. I know people who have emptied out the innards into a cannon and shot it off... nice magical mist...

Innards in a coke bottle would, well, make it visible at night. Imagine taking a nice serene walk through the neighborhood one late summer evening, fireflies dancing, evening sprinklers on, just you and - BOOM! Look above you and something glowing bright green blurs above your head and two kids are screaming, "Heads!"

Of course, shooting it off in the middle of a neighborhood is just asking for a bill for fixing someone's house, window, car, cat...

[Clark Gilbert]

DJ and Greg:

I see it now:


This summer (by then i'll have a job and cash to waste on fun projects like this)....we could try to make a very miniture version (still dangerous ..but thats the fun)

You two can do the electrical stuff and i'll do all the mechanical stuff...i can see this being quite easy...hey....maybe we can get some hints or help from Koors (he's the guy with all the cool gadgets and projects )

........OR..........

I can try to talk to Tino and get the 10ft and ~21ft Spud Guns from his grandparents..and then we can fix them up (i know they wont work joints too weak from sitting around...[we almost killed our selves on the 4th of July when the darn thing exploded...heheh])


Just a thought...

[DanL]

Originally posted by Clark Gilbert
DJ and Greg:
[we almost killed our selves on the 4th of July when the darn thing exploded...heheh])

*raises eyebrows* Explain, please.