Disclaimer: The information presented on this page is intended for people of 21 years of age or older who have a good working knowledge of electrical and electronic safety. The author is not responsible for any loss of any kind brought about by using the information given.
My friends Jackson Allen, Justin Copeland, Vanessa Yu, and I decided to build a Tesla Coil...
and two months later on May 13, 1998 Sparky was born.
Before I go on about Sparky(the Tesla coil that we built), I would like to thank a few people who have contributed greatly to the birth of Sparky:
Choad - for posting the plans on the internet and
helping us adjust the plans for a 15Kv transformer.
my dad - for giving us expertise on how to put the whole thing together
Mr. Allen - for letting us use his tools, and cooking dinner
Mrs. Allen - for letting us roam around her house and garage, and for letting
us use her gigantic car
my mom - for cooking dinner
Gonzo,our Physic
Teacher - for providing the transformer and the electrode on top of the secondary
Clint - for selling us another transformer cheap
Jackson - chauffer(until something happend to his car...) and handyman
Justin - our chauffer
Vanessa - our wrapper
To see a movie of our Tesla coil in action download one of the following files:
Real Video File : 25.7 KB
AVI File : 168 KB
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| The diagram of Sparky |
A picture of Sparky
It took alot of sweat, hardwork, and two nights in my garage to actually put the Tesla coil together, and much much more to make all the parts. All we accomplished that first night we tried to put the parts together was to burn out our spark gap, blow out our transformer, and blow the fuse of my entire house. :) Yes, it was quite a wonderful experience. The second night was much better. After fixing the spark gap, putting back the choke, driving 20 min to buy another transformer, and adjusting, adjusting, adjusting the primary our tesla coil worked. The next day, we took it to school. Gonzo added the Variable autotransformer, and the electrode on top. Now Sparky, fires sparks alittle over a foot.
Here're all the parts we made, materials we used:
Transformer Safty Gap RF Choke Spark Gap Capacitor Primary Secondary Bottom
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15Kv 30MA Neon Sign
Transformer (right) Variable autotransformer (left) (We added this later, it made tuning our Tesla coil easier) You can find a neon sign transformer by calling some Neon sign stores. We blew out Gonzo's, 15 Kv 30 MA Transformer, and the fuse of my entire house because we didn't set it up right at first. Trust me, NEVER decide to do without a spark gap AND an RF Choke when trying out your Tesla coil if you value your transformer and your house... |
2 - 4" x .25" zinc bolts
2 - 2" x 2" L shaped brackets to mount bolts in
4 - .25" zinc nuts
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I mounted the L brackets about 4" apart, then put a nut on each bolt and put each one through the top hole in each bracket. I then placed the other nut on the bolts and tightend it. When the entire tesla coil was done we adjusted it so that it only fired occasionaly.(When we decided to do without our spark gap and choke, this was firing like crazy(NOT smart). |
1 - 2" diameter
PVC pipes 8" long
500" #28 magnet wire
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Vanessa wrapped it just like the secondary coil(who knows how many TV shows that took ^_^). This wire in that quantity is harder to find than you think. Try motor repair shops, and talk nice. They might let you buy some... |
12 - 1" x
4" pieces of hard copper pipe
1 - 6" diameter PVC 7" long
1 - end cap for the 6" PVC pipe
(or whatever you can use to mount a muffin fan in, we used a
piece of wood ring)
24 - .25" Brass machine screws with nuts and washers
4 - #6 Brass machine screws with nuts
3 - feet of good quality lamp cord
18" of thick wall vinyl tubing
1- tube of Stiff epoxy
1 - 4" muffin fan
(it's ideal to have a 5.25" muffin fan but we could only
find a 4" one)
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Jackson and Justin did almost all of this part. Took them forever, I believe. First Justin, Vanessa and I cut the copper water pipe into twelve 4 inch sections and polished the pieces. Then Jackson drilled two holes in a line 1/2" from the top and bottom of each section and two corresponding holes, larger than those drilled in the copper pipe, into the PVC drain pipe. Then Jackson and Justin mounted the first electrode. Two 1/4" brass machine screws were used with the screw heads inside of the copper pipe and the threaded ends extending outside. Then they installed a washer and nut on the screws and tightend until snug. They repeated this process one at a time, with all 12 copper pipes. They made sure that none of the pipes were touching, and that there was a gap of about .028 inches between each. Then they removed the first two electrodes and smeared a stiff epoxy on the back sides around the screws. (I heard that the epoxy was a pain in the...) Then they reinstalled the electrodes and snug the washers and nuts down, adjusted as necessary for a parallel gap. Then they wiped away the excess and thoroughly cleaned the screw threads above the nut. We had to put an insulator in between two of the copper pipes(the two we were connecting to the Capacitor). We burnt through a piece of PVC and CD case before Vanessa came up with the idea of using a ceramic tile to put between them. |
5 - miller beer
bottles
5 - pint or half pint plastic bottle lids
5 - 6" x .25" zinc bolts
15 - .25" zinc nuts
2 - rolles of electrical tape
1 - 25 foot roll of alumium foil
1 - box of un-iodized salt
1- quart cheap motor oil
We cleaned the labels and anything else on the bottles off. Then Justin poured about half an inch of salt in each bottle. Then Justin and Jackson filled the bottles to the bottom of the neck with hot water. We then put the caps on the bottles and shook them to mix the salt and water. Jackson drilled .25" holes in the center of the lids. Then Justin placed the bolt with 1 nut on it through the hole. The Justin placed the other nut on the bolt and tightend it leaving about .25" of the bolt sticking out above the top nut. When the water in the bottles has cooled we filled them up the rest of the way with motor oil. Then we placed the caps with the bolts through them into the bottles and Jackson tightend them down. The bolt displaced the oil and caused some to come out.(Sorry Jackson for getting it all over your garage floor) Vanessa and I took some foil and tore off enough to go all the way around the bottle, then folded the foil so that it just covered the bottle up to the bottom of the neck and the bottom of the bottle. We rubbed the foil with a piece of paper so that it would press the bottles tightly We then took some wire and wrapped it around the foil covered bottle leaving about 6" hanging from the bottom. Then we wrapped 2 layers of electrical tape around the foil on the sides tightly. After that Justin hot glued around the lid and top bolt to seal it. Jackson made a box for our capacitor out of ply wood with a hole on the side and top. Vanessa and I lined the bottom with foil. Jackson soddered the wires from the bottles together, and taped it down unto the foil. Then we put the whole thing into the box.
55' of solid #12 wire
1- 12" X 12" piece of plywood
8 - 6" long dowels 1/4" diameter
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Jackson took the ply wood and drilled 8 holes for the dowels in a octagon pattern. The outer diameter was 10". He stuck the dowels in the holes and glued them in with wood glue. Vanessa and I stripped the wire. And I wrapped the #12 wire around the dowels with .25" spacing until I ran out of room on the dowels. I hot glued the wire at each point that it came to a dowel. Jackson drilled a hole in the plywood inside the primary (this was to run the ground wire for the secondary). |
1- 4" outer
diameter PVC pipe 17" long
1000' #24 magnet wire
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Vanessa coated the PVC with polyurethane about two or three times. She then took the wire and made a loop around the PVC about 1" from the end. She hot glued this down to the PVC. Leaving about 1 foot of wire extra on each end, she wrapped the wire around the PVC so that the windings are against each other. She wrapped it until she ran out of wire. This will took her about 3 hours, or in her words "6 TV shows". She hot glued the other end in the same manner as the beginning end. Jackson cut a piece of plexiglass the diameter of the secondary and drilled a hole to put our bolt through the center. We placed a nut on the bolt to hold it in place. Vanessa and I glued the plexiglass with down with the bolt sticking up. We stripped and wrapped the magnet wire around the bolt placing washers on either side of the wire. We then took some aluminum tape and taped everything on top of the plexiglass down. |
That's the end of our Tesla coil story.
Transformer Safty Gap RF Choke Spark Gap Capacitor Primary Secondary Top