physically large coils

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>


The whole area of "how do you build a big coil that can be moved 
conveniently" is a fascinating one.

By now, it's fairly straightforward to build a pig powered coil with 
a 12-16" diameter secondary and having it work fairly well "out of 
the box" (assuming you've built a few coils before, and you are 
reasonably careful with the models).

The problem is that the thing is going to be a beast, and non-trivial 
to move around.  Not everyone has a big panel truck in which to 
transport their coil. Although, I have seriously thought about 
getting a small trailer to build a big coil on, and then parking it 
at a RV storage yard.

So, you look to designs like that one in England that had the nesting 
secondary segments, or something that can at least breakdown into 
"carryable by one person" chunks (e.g. the OSHA 55 lb, 25kg 
one-person-lift limit).

You also want something that won't take 8 hours to assemble, and it 
needs to be fairly rugged after assembly.  Say you had your 16" 
diameter secondary, and it's say, 7 ft long overall.  You could break 
it into 2 foot segments that lock together with some sort of 
electrical connector (a sort of nontrivial design exercise in itself)

What about the 4-5 ft diameter primary?  Can it be made to collapse/fold/stow?

The HV supply can be made fairly small and light.

Think about "how would I fit this whole thing into the back of a station wagon"