Hi, all, I'm new to this list. I'm a physics professor at a small
liberal arts college. About 5 years ago, before I was hired, one of our
physics students built a tesla coil for his senior project. It's been
gathering dust in our machine shop ever since. Some of my current
Electricity and Magnetism students and I are working on putting it back
into working order.
We haven't been able to find the original construction plans which the
student followed to build it; if you recognize the design, a link to the
plans would be appreciated.
I've got several questions about getting this thing tuned up and working
well, so let me describe it first. Here are the vital statistics of the
coil as we found it. I'm writing this from home, so I'm going by memory
here....
125 v->12.5 kv transformer to power primary circuit, toaster-sized white
box (neon sign transformer?)
6 brine-filled glass bottle capacitors made from root beer bottles
Spark gap: single gap made from two trailer hitch balls mounted on a
wooden frame
Primary circuit wiring: Heavy gauge wire (4-gauge? 6?) with pretty thick
insulation, type unknown. Alligator-clip connectors to primary coil.
Primary coil: Inverted conical helix made from 1/4" copper pipe, about
7-8 turns, smallest diameter 14 inches, largest diameter 30 inches,
height about 20 inches, mounted on triangular plywood supports.
Secondary coil: 14-16 gauge wire on white PVC pipe, 5"ish diameter, 36"
length
Top load: 30" toroid made from 4" diameter metal ventilation ducting,
mounted on foil-covered plywood disk.
There are no safety or protection circuits built into the system as we
found it -- no safety spark gap across the transformer, no filters or
switches on the mains side of things, no grounding rail above the
primary, all stuff I've read about. I've made it very clear to the
students that the primary circuit is absolutely lethal... I'm not sure
they took me seriously at first, but they sure did once they saw and
heard the spark gap firing.
Repairs:
The bottle caps had been sitting filled for five years. Exciting
chemistry had taken place between the brine, the oil, and the metal bolts
used as electrodes, leaving an unholy sludgy mess inside. We just threw
these out, replacing them with a six-pack of Corona (heh) bottles, built
more or less according to http://www.pupman.com/
listarchives/1995/december/msg00040.html
We wired the thing with the supply transformer bridging across the
capacitor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tesla_coil_4.svg ) -- I
now understand that it's better for the transformer to put the
transformer bridging across the spark gap (http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Image:Tesla_coil_3.svg). The "ground" end of the secondary was
attached to a copper pipe providing compressed air throughout the
building.
We placed a grounded pipe (galvanized 1/2" steel electrical conduit) near
the toroid to draw a spark.
Testing:
We first ran a test of the power supply without the primary coil in the
circuit, shorting the alligator clips together. With the spark gap too
wide, we heard a hum and a quiet snappy crackle. We could see some
corona discharge from the aluminum foil surrounding the bottles, but they
didn't seem to be heating up etc. With the spark gap set at 5-7 mm, we
got a nice loud, bright spark, and the students were impressed.
When we hooked up the primary coil, a fluorescent tube held in the hand
lit up from about 6 feet away. We got corona discharge from the end of
the grounded pipe to the toroid when the end was about 8-10 inches away,
and occasional dim sparks when the end came within 6-8 inches. When the
pipe end was raised so the shaft of the pipe rather than the end was
closest to the toroid, we could draw a steady crackle of bright sparks
5-6" long.
Tuning was done by adjusting the position of alligator clips on the
primary using trial-and-error, just fiddling to try to get the longest
spark. Best we could do was 6-8 inches of spark.
So, not too bad, but I feel like this coil is probably capable of more.
Questions for you:
1) What should we expect from this coil?
2) If we should expect more, is the problem likely one of LC tuning, or
should we be looking for power loss elsewhere?
3) Is it worth going to the extra effort of measuring the resonance of
secondary and primary using an oscillator and oscilloscope and tuning
that way, or is that just lipstick on a pig at this point?
4) Is a little corona discharge from the bottle capacitors a problem?
If so, how can we correct it? (Trim sharp edges from the aluminum foil?)
5) Do the two circuits mentioned earlier perform equally well, with the
only difference being protection for the transformer, or does one give a
better zap?
Thanks for any help you can give. Please keep in mind that we're not
interested in redesigning and rebuilding this from the ground up: we just
want to get it working to original design spec.
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