Thanks! I'm glad my video was helpful. You will use one side of the transformer it it's "end point grounded," if you have only 1 high voltage output. If it's center-tapped, you'll have 2 HV outputs, and then you will use both sides. You'll connect the primary winding across both output terminals. So it depends on what kind of transformer you have.
Awesome video! My friend and I are right now very interested in trying to build a decent coil, to experiment with the musical aspects as demonstrated in a few other videos. This is definitely one of the most clear and easy to understand explanations on how to build one. I am definitely looking forward to anything more you will have.
Magnetic induction. I made one in college, and it was so strong that you could walk into the room it was in with a flourescent lightbulb in your hand and it would light up while your hair stood on end, but it also ionizes all the oxygen molecules in the air, and by attaching charged particles to them they become heavy and drop to the floor, leaving the air smelling like bleach and eventually unbreathable. Pretty amazing stuff. That is only because it was in a small room.
I have to agree with you on this. In fact, gas has a property called "negative resistance" where it becomes more conductive once it's ionized and the resistance drops as more current flows through it. That's why florescent lamps and neon signs have to be current limited, because once the gas tube is energized it is essentially a short circuit.
That's pretty much correct. A transformer can be used to increase or decrease the voltage. The amperage is also changed, but the overall amount of POWER remains the same. Power is Volts X Amps = Watts. So, for example, 6 volts at 2 amps is the exact same thing as 12 volts at 1 amp. They would both equal 12 Watts. It's the same as how 1 dollar is equal to 4 quarters. If you change a dollar bill to coins, the amount of currency is the same, you're just changing the form of it.
I've become a Tesla nut within the last year or so. I have no electrician's knowledge, but am a huge admirer of his work. What I still don't know is, what can you actually use a Tesla coil for? Is it just to make a really cool light show or what?
All three of these videos are great. It's the most helpful thing I've found for building a tesla coil. However I have a couple simple questions. (1) Where did you find the magnet wire? Places like radioshack don't have nearly enough to fit the dimensions you recommend so I don't know if i could use that. (2) What wire do you use for the rest of the circuit? (3) What do you know about beer-bottle capacitors? (4) Is your topload a CD? Again thanks for your videos!
You probably could make a smaller coil, but there is a practical minimum voltage for getting the spark gap to fire correctly. I suggested 6kv as the minimum, because any lower than that and you'll have a lot of trouble getting the spark gap to fire smooth. If the voltage is too low, you have to set the gap very close just to get it to fire...and then you have problems with it getting too hot and firing too early, before the capacitor has a chance to charge fully.
by the way...there are Tesla Coils powered by vacuum tube cicuits. They work with resonance too, but using vacuum tubes instead of a spark gap, and they have an extra primary winding for feedback for the tubes. I've actually seen one running, and they're awesome. But they're more complicated and I haven't tried building one yet. If you can find an old amp or shortwave radio that has a high voltage plate transformer, that would have a lot of the parts you would need for a vacuum tube TC.
Right, but the coil can also resonate at harmonics of the resonant frequency---or integer multiples of "fundamental" resonant frequency. Great video in terms of info!
While the ionized air around the TC topload would provide a low-resistance path for lightening to enter, this area is already occupied by the output of the TC, therefore the resistance in this area would not provide as much of a resistance-free zone as you describe. In a thunderstorm, lightening would most likely not notice any tesla coil running, and would instead search for any solid metal to jump to, such as the grounding rod, or the topload itself.
Good question, in order to get radiant energy into our circuit we have to give it a chance to enter the circuit by changing our wiring a bit. First off all we need both HV transformer secondaries and will wire each of the two leads to one side of a spark gap and one side of a capacitor, that will give us 2 caps, the opposite polarity terminal on each cap will term to each side of the Tesla primary . No conventional EM currents will flow on the Tesla primary only longitudinal currents.
The best advice I can give is to look for a neon sign shop or electrical surplus place in your area. The other transformer is a furnace ignition transformer...just try calling around at heating and air conditioning repair shops. Also, look on eBay! I just got a 7.5kv neon transformer for $20 not that long ago.
You CAN connect the bottom of the secondary winding to neutral, but it would be better to use the ground line. I just used the neutral line as the ground because I live in an old house where most of the outlets only have 2 wires (hot and neutral). If everything in your circuit breaker box is connected right, then the neutral line should be at 0 volts anyway, and so for a small Tesla Coil it would be okay to use the neutral line as the ground if you had to.
Exactly. A Tesla Coil needs high voltage for the spark gap oscillator, and then boosts the voltage higher. Depending on how you build it, and the power source, it's possible to get several hundred thousand volts or even millions of volts from a large coil. A Tesla Coil also increases the frequency. Typically, the resonant frequency will be in the 400 kilohertz range. Although my coil operates at 1 megahertz.
0GRATO, thanks for the tip but I've been experimenting with high voltage for over 10 years. I built my first Tesla Coil back around 1999 (long before they were "cool" and every kid was building one in his garage). There are only certain high vacuum light bulbs which emit X-Rays and I've had it tested with a Geiger counter. They only emit soft X-Rays, which are mostly harmless.
Few things conduct, but everything has flow. The earth is a giant magnet, with frequencies that are higher than ac. The potential difference between a cloudless sky and ground is 100 kv roughly. NICE!
If it uses a high voltage plate transformer, then yeah it might work. But you need at least 6,000 volts. Also, I think you have to use external resistance with plate transformers because I don't think they're current limited.
It's not so much because of the current, although there is a lot of energy from the capacitor discharge. You want a thicker wire so there will be low resistance. High frequency current mainly flows on the surface of a conductor, so you want more surface area on the primary winding. It actually would have been better for me to use a solid wire or even copper tubing for the primary winding, but stranded wire was just easier to work with.
yeah, the wire itself has resistance of course, what they sometimes call "copper loss," and you could just measure that with an Ohm meter. BUT it's very low, maybe around 2 Ohms at most. The reason is because when they build transformers, they take inductive reactance into consideration, and so the winding is designed to have very low resistance. Most of the resistance actually comes from inductive reactance. That's why the primay is usually just a low number of turns of thick wire.
I normally use 14 guage wire. 18 AWG would be okay just for a temporary connection, but I probably wouldn't recommend it for a permanent hook up. Esepcially not for the 120v input lines that go to your transformers, since depending on how big the transformer is, it might draw a lot of current. It really depends on how big your Tesla Coil is, but I think you're better off with 14 AWG.
yeah, but up to a certain point. For a spark gap Tesla Coil, you don't want the primary voltage to be either too low or too high. Around 6kv - 15kv is ideal. Any lower or higher than that, and it's hard to adjust the spark gap and get it to fire smoothly. For a bigger Tesla Coil, what you mainly need is more current.
Connecting capacitors in series doubles the voltage rating, but it divides the capacitance value. So for example, if you connect two 1kv .01 microfarad capacitors together in series, the rating then becomes 2kv .005 microfarad. Does that make sense?
yeah, solid state circuits are more sensitive to high frequency kickback, so you have to have more protection for the transformer with a solid state Tesla Coil. Also, solid state TC's generate a DC output, whereas conventional AC spark-gap Tesla Coils generate a resonant AC waveform. Solid state Tesla Coils also tend to be smaller because electronic components can't handle as much power as straight AC transformers and a spark gap.
...also, with some transformers, like microwave transformers, one end of the secondary winding is connected to the core, and the core is grounded. This helps to reduce the stress on the insulation. If the transformer had two "hot" output lines, then there would have to be much thicker insulation between the secondary winding and the core because there would be a bigger chance of it arcing to the core.
Actually, the ionized air surrounding a TC would provide a wonderful conductor. That's the principle behind the spark gap. A TC wouldn't "attract" lightning, but it (and the ionized air) would provide a low-resistance path to ground.
I used the neutral line because I live in an old house that has a 2 wire system, just live and neutral (the neutral line is grounded at the main panel). Most houses have live, neutral, and ground. Ideally, you should connect the bottom of your secondary to ground, but you could use neutral if you had to.
That's going to be the hard part. You'll need capacitors that are rated for at least 24kv if you use that transformer. Look on eBay or electronic surplus shops. You can try a place called Fair Radio Sales. They have a website, look it up on Google. Sometimes they have high voltage capacitors (and transformers). Also try C and H Surplus in Pasadena, California. You can order stuff online from them too.
You should try to avoid kinks and wind the secondary as neatly as you can. But it shouldn't be a big problem, especially if it's lower on the secondary winding, where the voltage gradient will be lower. If you have a lot of kinks or overlapping turns higher on the winding, closer to the top, then you might get some corona. But I don't think you need to worry about it.
When I built a DC coil, I used a rechargeable 12 volt battery, and I connected a relay so that it vibrated and changed the current to pulsating DC to drive a small neon transformer. Then I just used that to power a spark gap Tesla Coil. I got decent sparks from it, but still nowhere near what you get from AC. The problem is that if you power the transformer with a battery, you have very low voltage. So you need to have close coupling between the primary and secondary winding.
First of all, what kind of "mini" Tesla Coil do you want? They don't really scale down that well. There's a limit to how small you can build them because they're affected so much by the size of the windings. The inductance is pretty critical. Also, ONE microwave transformer isn't enough. The voltage is too low. You would have to connect at least two of them in series, and even then the voltage might not be high enough. I would recommend a neon transformer.
I use 14 gauge stranded wire. I've drawn loads of up to 20 amps with no problems. You can look up the ampacity if you wanted, but 20 gauge wire will actually handle a lot of current. As far as how much current is in the output, I have no idea. I don't really have any practical way of measuring that. It generates 100,000 volts! The voltage is extremely high and it's high frequency, but the actual current is probably microamps. Still, the arcs are hot enough to set paper on fire!
...with no load on the secondary windings, the light bulb is actually dim because of the inductive reactance of the transformers' primary windings. However, when I draw an arc from the secondary windings, the load cancels out the inductive reactance on the primary winding, there is less impedance, and so the light bulb gets a lot brighter.
Drum67IX, I live in an old house and most of the outlets just have a 2-wire system. But with a small coil like this, you can use the neutral line as the ground. The neutral line is grounded at the circuit breaker box anyway.
How large is the static electric field that surrounds the Tesla coil? What is the shape of that field? I noticed in the Tesla picture of the Colorado Springs Lab, there was a giant pole with a ball on top, protruding from the building. Did this extend or alter the location of the static electric field when compared to where the coil was located?
You can also use an ignition coil as transformer. Input Voltage is 12V DC and Output VOltage is 10kV DC. If you use 2 of them you have 20kV DC. You can do something with that :D
Capacitors are connected in series all the time. That's normal. In order to increase the voltage rating of capacitors, you have to connect them in series.
If you provided a path of low resistance, like a channel of ionized air, then yes it might be possible. In fact, this is why when you draw an arc from a high voltage transformer, the arc will usually stay on the same path, because that path of air is charged and ionized and the current will continue traveling along that path because it has the least resistance.
@flargrbargr The bottom end of the secondary winding is connected to ground (or you can also use the AC neutral line). The other end is connected to the output terminal.
Fantastic your tesla sparks!! Why is it neccesarily to make the prim windings (3/8 inch) so thick? I presume the current is less than 100 Ma. May I ask you some more questions next time. I will make one too, but smaller!
That's simple....just cut the cord and connect your own wiring. If it has 3 wires, then you have to connect everything on the Tesla Coil that needs to be grouned...the bottom of the secondary winding, etc to the ground line on the cord. Usually it wil be green. If the cord only has 2 wires, then you just need to decide which wire you're going to use as the "hot" line, and which one you're going to connect to the neutral line.
Well, I've been experimenting with high voltage for over 10 years. I've always been interested in science, ever since I was a kid. But I became more interested in electriicity after I started reading. It's kind of a long story actually. I got interested in Nikola Tesla and I decided to build a Tesla Coil. I started reading more and doing more research online. This was back in the late 90's (around 1998 or so)...way before TH-cam and every kid was building a Tesla Coil in his garage!
first very cool 3 videos, nice work, I have a couple of questions... my oibt has a 3 core flex, active, neutral and earth. plus one hv terminal. the other end of the secondary being the earth. will this work ok? I want to use an rf earth so is this right... active neutral in flex feed the obit earth from flex (obit secondary) connects to one side of safety gap, cap, primary (tesla) and secondary (tesla)&rf earth or use the rf earth just for the tesla sec, and tie the others to the neutral.
I just wanted to mention that microwave oven transformers are internally current limited. They use magnetic shunts, just like NSTs. The limiting is only about 1/10 of an NST, but it will put a ceiling on the current draw.
I always wanted to build a tesla coil, but I am too afraid of making a small, but deadly mistake. Tesla did a show at the worlds fair using his coils. it would be neat to see a vid of the things he did.
you really explain things good!!! Keep it up, i have 2 mots hooked in series and i was wandering if a voltage muliplier cicuit would be suffiecent to power the tesla coil? The type i'm talking about is either a Marx Generator or Cockroft-Wilson type setup. thanks alot
Well, similar but not quite the same. The transformer in a fluorescent light heats a filament at each end of the tube. That boils off electrons and starts a conductive pathway through the tube. Once the tube is excited, it takes very little energy to keep the tube lit. Sometimes fluorescent transformers use high voltage to excite the tube, but usually no more than about 600 volts. So yeah, the idea is the same...but with using low voltage.
@Itsmeeman1 No, the Wardenclyff Tower was meant to TRANSMIT electrical power, without wires. But it still required an external power source. Tesla never intended a device that would magically pull energy out of the air. That's not what he was working on. At one time, he suggested it might be possible to build a device that could generate power by absorbing cosmic radiation (similar to a photovoltaic cell today). But not something that magically created power from nothing.
I have a question about the buildup. I'm having difficulties understanding the whole deal about Farad and capacitans. I'm starting to see that a low capacitans in a condensator will let it charge faster at a lower output amperage. But in a tesla coil would there be a relation between the condensator, transformer output and/or supposed frequence? Is higher or lower Farad best for TC's?
To me, that sounds like a good idea, but it depends on the capacitance value. The current will be limited by the transformer, anyway (you are using a current limited transformer, or some kind of an external ballast, right?). Your main concern for the capacitors is the voltage rating and the capacitance value. Do you know what the capacitance on those capacitors is?
@xavierz71 a Tesla Coil does not generate electricity on its own. It only converts it to high voltage and high frequency. You still need an external power supply. It is possible to use Tesla Coils to transmit and receive power without wires, like a radio signal. In fact, that's what Nikola Tesla was working on. But you would still need an energy source.
yeah, if you connect 12 of them in series, that would increase the voltage rating to 12kv. But just remember that it will also divide the capacitance by 12.
Because with a transformer, you have two windings and mutual inductance. When you draw a load from the secondary winding, it cancels out the inductive reactance on the primary winding. The primary and secondary winding are inductively coupled, so what happens to one affects the other. I have a video that shows this. Look at one of my recent videos, showing a 4,000 volt power supply with microwave transformers. I used a light bulb in series with the primary winding to limit current...
...Have you seen that movie "The Prestige"? That scene where they are outside and Nikola Tesla's assistant shows the field of light bulbs being lit up by a power station several miles away (with no wires) is actually based on a TRUE story. Tesla really did an experiment like that in Colorado Springs. That was one of the most awesome scenes I had ever watched in a movie, because I knew it really DID happen. You should read the book about Tesla, called "Man Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney.
I've tried building "minature" Tesla Coils using 3.5kv or 4kv transformers and I could never get it to work right. I had to set the gap very close just to get it to jump, and then what happened was I just got a 60hz arc from the transformer. There was very little capacitance from the capactor and no high frequency resonance. Even when I did get the gap to fire, it was very erratic and I got tiny sparks from the secondary. 6kv is the minimum I use now.
I make a rough estimate of the voltage output, based on the spark length. As far as the output frequency goes, I have to admit that a friend helped me with that. I don't remember exactly how he did it, but we connected the secondary winding to an oscilloscope by itself, and based on some calculations he determined that the frequency was approximately 1.5 megahertz. I do know that generally, the diameter and length of the secondary winding determines the frequency, because of the inductance.
If it can supply enough current. You need at least 20 milliamps. You also need a sufficient voltage, at least 6,000 volts, but most flyback transformers can supply much more than that.
first very cool 3 videos, nice work, I have a couple of questions... my oibt has a 3 core flex, active, neutral and earth. plus one hv terminal. the other end of the secondary being the earth. will this work ok?, your schematic has one side of the primary tied to the neutral. wont this put the osscilations of the tank circuit back through the house wiring? also you seem to have a filter only on the active, is this correct?
You can, but that might complicate things. What are you going to use to drive the ignition coil? Are you going to make some kind of solid state power supply? I have used a simple circuit with a dimmer switch and a capacitor, and the ignition coil worked great for a while. But it didn't last very long. The dimmer switch burned out :( Also since you don't know the exact output if you experiment with an ignition coil, you wouldn't know what voltage rating your capacitors would need to be.
Wasn't the Tesla Coil at Wardenclyff designed to collect and then distribute free electricity absorbed from the surrounding charged air without an outside power source?
Do you mean from a Tesla Coil, or from the 2kv transformer by itself? How much current did you have? You might be able to DRAW 2kv out that far if you have a lot of current, but there's no way it will initially jump that far by itself. Even 15,000 volts won't jump that far by itself. I can draw it out several inches after the arc starts though.
No matter how ionized the air becomes, the breakdown voltage of air is around 3000 volts potential. Copper wire has much less resistance than any ionized air. Obviously ionized air would allow for a lower resistance path for lightening, however this area surrounding a TC is not very large, so the probability for lightening to strike the actual TC during operation is slim at best. Also, as the air heats up around the TC, its conductivity lowers, which is what I was eluding to in my previous post.
@ct92404 Thank you for the reply. I've seen Tesla's designs on how to absorb charged particles from the air and gather them as a form of static electricity then use that power to produce work in devices. I was waiting for someone to mention photovoltaic cells. Tesla's were a more primitive precursor to them. Still, the electricity would be gained passively, stored then pulsed for use. A 'trickle' collection of 'free' or 'renewable' energy. Depending upon which term you prefer to use. Ciao
Its because you are a natural teacher, your vids are good quality and informative, and you are easy to listen to. Nice Vid.
You have done a very thorough & explanatory video on this - Nikola would be proud of your work! Thanks for sharing.
Great job on the Tesla Coil videos. Your coverage of safety, history and formulas was excellent. Thanks for your contribution.
You're extremely good at explaining this.. Like, the best I've seen.
Thanks! I'm glad my video was helpful. You will use one side of the transformer it it's "end point grounded," if you have only 1 high voltage output. If it's center-tapped, you'll have 2 HV outputs, and then you will use both sides. You'll connect the primary winding across both output terminals. So it depends on what kind of transformer you have.
Thanks for such a great explanation! You have saved me lots of 'googling' time!
Thank you for posting this video. Great Job. I'm looking forward to seeing the next video.
Awesome video! My friend and I are right now very interested in trying to build a decent coil, to experiment with the musical aspects as demonstrated in a few other videos. This is definitely one of the most clear and easy to understand explanations on how to build one. I am definitely looking forward to anything more you will have.
Clear diagrams and sound with detailed explanations.
Thanks man!
Wish you all success on planet earth
Bye
Magnetic induction. I made one in college, and it was so strong that you could walk into the room it was in with a flourescent lightbulb in your hand and it would light up while your hair stood on end, but it also ionizes all the oxygen molecules in the air, and by attaching charged particles to them they become heavy and drop to the floor, leaving the air smelling like bleach and eventually unbreathable. Pretty amazing stuff. That is only because it was in a small room.
I have to agree with you on this. In fact, gas has a property called "negative resistance" where it becomes more conductive once it's ionized and the resistance drops as more current flows through it. That's why florescent lamps and neon signs have to be current limited, because once the gas tube is energized it is essentially a short circuit.
Great informative video. You explained it so well.
19 dislike are edison's relatives.
Alper Genc Hahaha!
Thanks for this video, the thorough explanation has finally convinced me to start building one
That's pretty much correct. A transformer can be used to increase or decrease the voltage. The amperage is also changed, but the overall amount of POWER remains the same. Power is Volts X Amps = Watts. So, for example, 6 volts at 2 amps is the exact same thing as 12 volts at 1 amp. They would both equal 12 Watts.
It's the same as how 1 dollar is equal to 4 quarters. If you change a dollar bill to coins, the amount of currency is the same, you're just changing the form of it.
I've become a Tesla nut within the last year or so. I have no electrician's knowledge, but am a huge admirer of his work. What I still don't know is, what can you actually use a Tesla coil for? Is it just to make a really cool light show or what?
All three of these videos are great. It's the most helpful thing I've found for building a tesla coil. However I have a couple simple questions. (1) Where did you find the magnet wire? Places like radioshack don't have nearly enough to fit the dimensions you recommend so I don't know if i could use that. (2) What wire do you use for the rest of the circuit? (3) What do you know about beer-bottle capacitors? (4) Is your topload a CD? Again thanks for your videos!
Looking forward to part two mate, have wanted to make one of these for a while
You probably could make a smaller coil, but there is a practical minimum voltage for getting the spark gap to fire correctly. I suggested 6kv as the minimum, because any lower than that and you'll have a lot of trouble getting the spark gap to fire smooth. If the voltage is too low, you have to set the gap very close just to get it to fire...and then you have problems with it getting too hot and firing too early, before the capacitor has a chance to charge fully.
by the way...there are Tesla Coils powered by vacuum tube cicuits. They work with resonance too, but using vacuum tubes instead of a spark gap, and they have an extra primary winding for feedback for the tubes. I've actually seen one running, and they're awesome. But they're more complicated and I haven't tried building one yet. If you can find an old amp or shortwave radio that has a high voltage plate transformer, that would have a lot of the parts you would need for a vacuum tube TC.
wow you did a great job at this video Chris! you have some amazing pictures! i really want to start on mine.
Right, but the coil can also resonate at harmonics of the resonant frequency---or integer multiples of "fundamental" resonant frequency. Great video in terms of info!
While the ionized air around the TC topload would provide a low-resistance path for lightening to enter, this area is already occupied by the output of the TC, therefore the resistance in this area would not provide as much of a resistance-free zone as you describe. In a thunderstorm, lightening would most likely not notice any tesla coil running, and would instead search for any solid metal to jump to, such as the grounding rod, or the topload itself.
This is probably the best vid I've found on the topic. :-)
Good question, in order to get radiant energy into our circuit we have to give it a chance to enter the circuit by changing our wiring a bit. First off all we need both HV transformer secondaries and will wire each of the two leads to one side of a spark gap and one side of a capacitor, that will give us 2 caps, the opposite polarity terminal on each cap will term to each side of the Tesla primary . No conventional EM currents will flow on the Tesla primary only longitudinal currents.
The best advice I can give is to look for a neon sign shop or electrical surplus place in your area. The other transformer is a furnace ignition transformer...just try calling around at heating and air conditioning repair shops. Also, look on eBay! I just got a 7.5kv neon transformer for $20 not that long ago.
You CAN connect the bottom of the secondary winding to neutral, but it would be better to use the ground line. I just used the neutral line as the ground because I live in an old house where most of the outlets only have 2 wires (hot and neutral). If everything in your circuit breaker box is connected right, then the neutral line should be at 0 volts anyway, and so for a small Tesla Coil it would be okay to use the neutral line as the ground if you had to.
Exactly. A Tesla Coil needs high voltage for the spark gap oscillator, and then boosts the voltage higher. Depending on how you build it, and the power source, it's possible to get several hundred thousand volts or even millions of volts from a large coil.
A Tesla Coil also increases the frequency. Typically, the resonant frequency will be in the 400 kilohertz range. Although my coil operates at 1 megahertz.
0GRATO, thanks for the tip but I've been experimenting with high voltage for over 10 years. I built my first Tesla Coil back around 1999 (long before they were "cool" and every kid was building one in his garage). There are only certain high vacuum light bulbs which emit X-Rays and I've had it tested with a Geiger counter. They only emit soft X-Rays, which are mostly harmless.
Few things conduct, but everything has flow. The earth is a giant magnet, with frequencies that are higher than ac. The potential difference between a cloudless sky and ground is 100 kv roughly. NICE!
thanx for the info. i was checking out this video for info on power consumption.
I want the next part to be out soon! I liked this one!
Nikola would be proud of your work.
If it uses a high voltage plate transformer, then yeah it might work. But you need at least 6,000 volts. Also, I think you have to use external resistance with plate transformers because I don't think they're current limited.
It's not so much because of the current, although there is a lot of energy from the capacitor discharge. You want a thicker wire so there will be low resistance. High frequency current mainly flows on the surface of a conductor, so you want more surface area on the primary winding. It actually would have been better for me to use a solid wire or even copper tubing for the primary winding, but stranded wire was just easier to work with.
yeah, the wire itself has resistance of course, what they sometimes call "copper loss," and you could just measure that with an Ohm meter. BUT it's very low, maybe around 2 Ohms at most. The reason is because when they build transformers, they take inductive reactance into consideration, and so the winding is designed to have very low resistance. Most of the resistance actually comes from inductive reactance. That's why the primay is usually just a low number of turns of thick wire.
I normally use 14 guage wire. 18 AWG would be okay just for a temporary connection, but I probably wouldn't recommend it for a permanent hook up. Esepcially not for the 120v input lines that go to your transformers, since depending on how big the transformer is, it might draw a lot of current.
It really depends on how big your Tesla Coil is, but I think you're better off with 14 AWG.
yeah, but up to a certain point. For a spark gap Tesla Coil, you don't want the primary voltage to be either too low or too high. Around 6kv - 15kv is ideal. Any lower or higher than that, and it's hard to adjust the spark gap and get it to fire smoothly. For a bigger Tesla Coil, what you mainly need is more current.
Connecting capacitors in series doubles the voltage rating, but it divides the capacitance value. So for example, if you connect two 1kv .01 microfarad capacitors together in series, the rating then becomes 2kv .005 microfarad. Does that make sense?
yeah, solid state circuits are more sensitive to high frequency kickback, so you have to have more protection for the transformer with a solid state Tesla Coil. Also, solid state TC's generate a DC output, whereas conventional AC spark-gap Tesla Coils generate a resonant AC waveform. Solid state Tesla Coils also tend to be smaller because electronic components can't handle as much power as straight AC transformers and a spark gap.
...also, with some transformers, like microwave transformers, one end of the secondary winding is connected to the core, and the core is grounded. This helps to reduce the stress on the insulation. If the transformer had two "hot" output lines, then there would have to be much thicker insulation between the secondary winding and the core because there would be a bigger chance of it arcing to the core.
Actually, the ionized air surrounding a TC would provide a wonderful conductor. That's the principle behind the spark gap.
A TC wouldn't "attract" lightning, but it (and the ionized air) would provide a low-resistance path to ground.
I used the neutral line because I live in an old house that has a 2 wire system, just live and neutral (the neutral line is grounded at the main panel). Most houses have live, neutral, and ground. Ideally, you should connect the bottom of your secondary to ground, but you could use neutral if you had to.
I can't find the other videos in the series, Could you please put a link in the video to link each of the videos together?
That's going to be the hard part. You'll need capacitors that are rated for at least 24kv if you use that transformer. Look on eBay or electronic surplus shops. You can try a place called Fair Radio Sales. They have a website, look it up on Google. Sometimes they have high voltage capacitors (and transformers). Also try C and H Surplus in Pasadena, California. You can order stuff online from them too.
You should try to avoid kinks and wind the secondary as neatly as you can. But it shouldn't be a big problem, especially if it's lower on the secondary winding, where the voltage gradient will be lower. If you have a lot of kinks or overlapping turns higher on the winding, closer to the top, then you might get some corona. But I don't think you need to worry about it.
When I built a DC coil, I used a rechargeable 12 volt battery, and I connected a relay so that it vibrated and changed the current to pulsating DC to drive a small neon transformer. Then I just used that to power a spark gap Tesla Coil. I got decent sparks from it, but still nowhere near what you get from AC. The problem is that if you power the transformer with a battery, you have very low voltage. So you need to have close coupling between the primary and secondary winding.
First of all, what kind of "mini" Tesla Coil do you want? They don't really scale down that well. There's a limit to how small you can build them because they're affected so much by the size of the windings. The inductance is pretty critical. Also, ONE microwave transformer isn't enough. The voltage is too low. You would have to connect at least two of them in series, and even then the voltage might not be high enough. I would recommend a neon transformer.
I use 14 gauge stranded wire. I've drawn loads of up to 20 amps with no problems. You can look up the ampacity if you wanted, but 20 gauge wire will actually handle a lot of current.
As far as how much current is in the output, I have no idea. I don't really have any practical way of measuring that. It generates 100,000 volts! The voltage is extremely high and it's high frequency, but the actual current is probably microamps.
Still, the arcs are hot enough to set paper on fire!
...with no load on the secondary windings, the light bulb is actually dim because of the inductive reactance of the transformers' primary windings. However, when I draw an arc from the secondary windings, the load cancels out the inductive reactance on the primary winding, there is less impedance, and so the light bulb gets a lot brighter.
Drum67IX, I live in an old house and most of the outlets just have a 2-wire system. But with a small coil like this, you can use the neutral line as the ground. The neutral line is grounded at the circuit breaker box anyway.
How large is the static electric field that surrounds the Tesla coil?
What is the shape of that field?
I noticed in the Tesla picture of the Colorado Springs Lab, there was a giant pole with a ball on top, protruding from the building. Did this extend or alter the location of the static electric field when compared to where the coil was located?
You can also use an ignition coil as transformer. Input Voltage is 12V DC and Output VOltage is 10kV DC. If you use 2 of them you have 20kV DC. You can do something with that :D
what makes the difference? and how do i get the white aetheric discharges?
Capacitors are connected in series all the time. That's normal. In order to increase the voltage rating of capacitors, you have to connect them in series.
If you provided a path of low resistance, like a channel of ionized air, then yes it might be possible. In fact, this is why when you draw an arc from a high voltage transformer, the arc will usually stay on the same path, because that path of air is charged and ionized and the current will continue traveling along that path because it has the least resistance.
@flargrbargr
The bottom end of the secondary winding is connected to ground (or you can also use the AC neutral line). The other end is connected to the output terminal.
Fantastic your tesla sparks!! Why is it neccesarily to make the prim windings (3/8 inch) so thick? I presume the current is less than 100 Ma. May I ask you some more questions next time. I will make one too, but smaller!
It is a Tesla Coil, because it works with resonance and tuned circuits. Induction coils simply work with low frequency pulses.
ive always wondered this about tesla coils if you power the coil up while it is a thunder storn happening will the lightin go to the tesla coil ?
yeah, that should work fine. 9kv should be perfect actually. It's not too high or too low, so the spark gap would be easier to adjust.
That's simple....just cut the cord and connect your own wiring. If it has 3 wires, then you have to connect everything on the Tesla Coil that needs to be grouned...the bottom of the secondary winding, etc to the ground line on the cord. Usually it wil be green. If the cord only has 2 wires, then you just need to decide which wire you're going to use as the "hot" line, and which one you're going to connect to the neutral line.
Well, I've been experimenting with high voltage for over 10 years. I've always been interested in science, ever since I was a kid. But I became more interested in electriicity after I started reading. It's kind of a long story actually. I got interested in Nikola Tesla and I decided to build a Tesla Coil.
I started reading more and doing more research online. This was back in the late 90's (around 1998 or so)...way before TH-cam and every kid was building a Tesla Coil in his garage!
first very cool 3 videos, nice work, I have a couple of questions... my oibt has a 3 core flex, active, neutral and earth. plus one hv terminal. the other end of the secondary being the earth. will this work ok? I want to use an rf earth so is this right... active neutral in flex feed the obit earth from flex (obit secondary) connects to one side of safety gap, cap, primary (tesla) and secondary (tesla)&rf earth or use the rf earth just for the tesla sec, and tie the others to the neutral.
I just wanted to mention that microwave oven transformers are internally current limited. They use magnetic shunts, just like NSTs. The limiting is only about 1/10 of an NST, but it will put a ceiling on the current draw.
I would think so if you connect enough of them in series to bring up the voltage rating. Just calculate what the capacitance would be.
I always wanted to build a tesla coil, but I am too afraid of making a small, but deadly mistake. Tesla did a show at the worlds fair using his coils. it would be neat to see a vid of the things he did.
you really explain things good!!! Keep it up, i have 2 mots hooked in series and i was wandering if a voltage muliplier cicuit would be suffiecent to power the tesla coil? The type i'm talking about is either a Marx Generator or Cockroft-Wilson type setup. thanks alot
Really cool video. you have inspired me
Well, similar but not quite the same. The transformer in a fluorescent light heats a filament at each end of the tube. That boils off electrons and starts a conductive pathway through the tube. Once the tube is excited, it takes very little energy to keep the tube lit. Sometimes fluorescent transformers use high voltage to excite the tube, but usually no more than about 600 volts. So yeah, the idea is the same...but with using low voltage.
@JUKONGTH it is a possibility that you would burn up the transo whit the amps, and you would need the sparkgaps to be bigger.
@Itsmeeman1
No, the Wardenclyff Tower was meant to TRANSMIT electrical power, without wires. But it still required an external power source. Tesla never intended a device that would magically pull energy out of the air. That's not what he was working on. At one time, he suggested it might be possible to build a device that could generate power by absorbing cosmic radiation (similar to a photovoltaic cell today). But not something that magically created power from nothing.
I have a question about the buildup. I'm having difficulties understanding the whole deal about Farad and capacitans. I'm starting to see that a low capacitans in a condensator will let it charge faster at a lower output amperage. But in a tesla coil would there be a relation between the condensator, transformer output and/or supposed frequence? Is higher or lower Farad best for TC's?
great video and I have a 12000 volt 60ma transformer, could you use that or would that be lethal? thanks
To me, that sounds like a good idea, but it depends on the capacitance value. The current will be limited by the transformer, anyway (you are using a current limited transformer, or some kind of an external ballast, right?). Your main concern for the capacitors is the voltage rating and the capacitance value. Do you know what the capacitance on those capacitors is?
@xavierz71
a Tesla Coil does not generate electricity on its own. It only converts it to high voltage and high frequency. You still need an external power supply. It is possible to use Tesla Coils to transmit and receive power without wires, like a radio signal. In fact, that's what Nikola Tesla was working on. But you would still need an energy source.
yeah, if you connect 12 of them in series, that would increase the voltage rating to 12kv. But just remember that it will also divide the capacitance by 12.
Because with a transformer, you have two windings and mutual inductance. When you draw a load from the secondary winding, it cancels out the inductive reactance on the primary winding. The primary and secondary winding are inductively coupled, so what happens to one affects the other. I have a video that shows this. Look at one of my recent videos, showing a 4,000 volt power supply with microwave transformers. I used a light bulb in series with the primary winding to limit current...
...Have you seen that movie "The Prestige"? That scene where they are outside and Nikola Tesla's assistant shows the field of light bulbs being lit up by a power station several miles away (with no wires) is actually based on a TRUE story. Tesla really did an experiment like that in Colorado Springs. That was one of the most awesome scenes I had ever watched in a movie, because I knew it really DID happen. You should read the book about Tesla, called "Man Out of Time" by Margaret Cheney.
What type of wire should be used for the neutral and hot lines?
also, do you happen to know how many amps come from this design?
how do i make more of small scale tesla coil? ....i don't have those high voltage output transformers u talked about....suggestions plzz
I've tried building "minature" Tesla Coils using 3.5kv or 4kv transformers and I could never get it to work right. I had to set the gap very close just to get it to jump, and then what happened was I just got a 60hz arc from the transformer. There was very little capacitance from the capactor and no high frequency resonance. Even when I did get the gap to fire, it was very erratic and I got tiny sparks from the secondary. 6kv is the minimum I use now.
I make a rough estimate of the voltage output, based on the spark length. As far as the output frequency goes, I have to admit that a friend helped me with that. I don't remember exactly how he did it, but we connected the secondary winding to an oscilloscope by itself, and based on some calculations he determined that the frequency was approximately 1.5 megahertz. I do know that generally, the diameter and length of the secondary winding determines the frequency, because of the inductance.
If it can supply enough current. You need at least 20 milliamps. You also need a sufficient voltage, at least 6,000 volts, but most flyback transformers can supply much more than that.
Wow cool thanks! love your work and cant wait till the next vid.
Thank you very much, your videos are really nice.
Question on a possible experiment, could you recharge a large battery [i.e. Prius battery] with a Tesla coil?
first very cool 3 videos, nice work, I have a couple of questions... my oibt has a 3 core flex, active, neutral and earth. plus one hv terminal. the other end of the secondary being the earth. will this work ok?, your schematic has one side of the primary tied to the neutral. wont this put the osscilations of the tank circuit back through the house wiring? also you seem to have a filter only on the active, is this correct?
You can, but that might complicate things. What are you going to use to drive the ignition coil? Are you going to make some kind of solid state power supply? I have used a simple circuit with a dimmer switch and a capacitor, and the ignition coil worked great for a while. But it didn't last very long. The dimmer switch burned out :(
Also since you don't know the exact output if you experiment with an ignition coil, you wouldn't know what voltage rating your capacitors would need to be.
hey what about florecent light transformers. are those like neon sign transformers because its exciting a gas??
Idk any of these terms or anything but imma try to build one, wish me luck
Wasn't the Tesla Coil at Wardenclyff designed to collect and then distribute free electricity absorbed from the surrounding charged air without an outside power source?
Do you mean from a Tesla Coil, or from the 2kv transformer by itself? How much current did you have? You might be able to DRAW 2kv out that far if you have a lot of current, but there's no way it will initially jump that far by itself. Even 15,000 volts won't jump that far by itself. I can draw it out several inches after the arc starts though.
You should switch the place of the main spark gap and the tank cap to cut down on the resonant rise which can damage the transformer
what would running a coil with...say a computer within the vicinity do to it? or a tv?
what if you were to up the battery size, would this make significant difference or any at all?
No matter how ionized the air becomes, the breakdown voltage of air is around 3000 volts potential. Copper wire has much less resistance than any ionized air. Obviously ionized air would allow for a lower resistance path for lightening, however this area surrounding a TC is not very large, so the probability for lightening to strike the actual TC during operation is slim at best. Also, as the air heats up around the TC, its conductivity lowers, which is what I was eluding to in my previous post.
Awesome video!!!
I realy like your videos,but can I use an ignition coil instead of the neon transformer??! Please explain and answer!!
@ct92404 Thank you for the reply.
I've seen Tesla's designs on how to absorb charged particles from the air and gather them as a form of static electricity then use that power to produce work in devices. I was waiting for someone to mention photovoltaic cells. Tesla's were a more primitive precursor to them.
Still, the electricity would be gained passively, stored then pulsed for use. A 'trickle' collection of 'free' or 'renewable' energy. Depending upon which term you prefer to use.
Ciao