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The Spark Gap

I spent the evening at the Victoria Maker Space playing with the 3-D printer.  The result is one of the few pieces I needed to make for my Tesla coil (yes that same tesla coil I’ve been talking about building for the last two years, get off my back mum!). What is a spark gap?…

The Capacitors are soldered!

I was able to complete the construction and soldering of the capacitor board in a few hours.  The first step involves tracing out the circuit on a sheet of plexiglass, this  is : if you look at the back of the board you’ll see how I’ve but a resistor across each capacitor, this keeps the…

The Capacitors

The capacitors have finally arrived.  UPS decided that shipping them from Ontario -> My apartment in BC -> Ontario -> University of Victoria was a good idea. However, they have finally shown up!  Aren’t they beautiful? You will doubtless notice the little baggy of resistors.  These have a ridiculously high resistance and voltage tolerances.  They’re…

The Transformer

The first step in a Tesla coil is the transformer.  It is what generates the initial voltage increase from a piddling 120V that is produced by an outlet to the powerful kilo volt range.  In the good old days of 10 years ago you could just waltz down to a neon sign shop and purchase…

The Top Load

The top load is what turns the secondary coil into an LC circuit.  The idea is that it acts like a capacitor with the ground.  Charge builds up on it’s surface until the potential grows so large that a lighting bolt breaks out. The reason people shape it as a torus is to force the…

I was little disappointed to find out that the electronics shop had no appropriate capacitors lying around.  I had been hoping I could avoid assembling by hand, or buying the fiddly little bastards.  Oh well, I can only hope this doesn’t set me back too far.  It looks like the plate capacitors are actually pretty…