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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…

The Secondary Coil

This is the secondary coil for my Tesla coil.   It consists of roughly 1000 turns of 24 gauge magnet wire.  It was made by the University of Victoria machine shop.  They did a better job than I could have ever hoped for.  The trick was spending about an hour setting up a jigger to…

The Primary Coil

This weekend I spend most of my time working on the primary coil for the Tesla coil. I was very surprised that I actually managed to get this done.  It is made from copper piping and a hacked up cutting board.  I found it surprisingly fun figuring out the best way of assembling this.  Though…