Jonathan Peakall wrote:
Rob, Look out, here comes Mom... Please, don't try to use a 50kV xfrmr for your first coil.Firstly, the odds of your first mistake being your last are really high. Just as one wouldn't just toss someone into the pilots seat on an airplane without proper training, you really need to learn some safety techniques and gain some experience before attempting to use such a large xfrmr.Secondly, as herr zapp pointed out, it will be a LOT more expensive and difficult. Not just a little bit, but a lot. There is a reason that very few such high voltage coils exist. It can be done and might well be fun to do so, but it just isn't a beginners project.
Oh man... 50kV is a royal pain to work with. First off, lets talk corona. One generally wants your conductor radius large enough that the field at the surface is well below the breakdown for air. 30kV/cm.. so that means your wiring needs to be on the order of 2cm radius.. That's 1.5" or 2" tubing, and it ain't cheap OR easy to work with, even in aluminum.
X-ray transformers do this kind of voltage, but they immerse it in oil, and use fancy cable with special semiconductive layers and vacuum encapsulation (because even microscopic air bubbles lead to inevitable insulation failure)
If you MUST work with it, do yourself a favor and get yourself a decent sized Van de Graaff generator (like the 14" topload version from Science First).. you'll get a lot of experience working with high voltage and conductor radii, etc., all with stored energy small enough that your first mistake isn't your last.
Other things to do... run the darn thing at 1/4 or 1/3 voltage with a bank of incandescent lights in series (on the primary). If you inadvertently short the output (which WILL happen), the series lamps limit the current to keep you from burning out the transformer.
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