TESLA COIL ~ First Fire-Up

From: Blackbeard (Blackbeard_The_Great_at_Lycos.com)
Date: 02/04/05 

Date: Fri, 04 Feb 2005 05:01:02 GMT

We built our caps using the salt water/beer bottle trick. When we
fired it up, the bottles started to glow purple.

We never got any streamers. At the toroid, we noticed some slight
sparking between the magnet wire and the connection to to toroid. Out
of curiosity, we place a florescent bulb on top of the toroid. The
bulb glowed on our test....but still no streamers. Since the bulb
glowed, I assume it was getting power to the toroid. But we let the
thing run for at least 30 seconds and never saw lightening.

So we're stymied. Don't have a clue why we have no streamers. We had
approx. 2mm on our spark gap.

Here's how it's built...

Primary coil - 15 turns using 1/4OD Copper tubing
Secondary - 1500 turns using 24-gauge wire
Magnet wire from secondary connect to toroid at the top
Magnet wire from bottom of secondary goes to ground

Capacitors = 6 bottle filled with salt water, wrapped with aluminum
foil all daisy-chained together with wire.
One single wire on the daisy chain connects to the transformer
The second wire on the transformer connects to an aluminum pan that
makes a connection with those bottles where the aluminum makes contact
with the aluminum pan.

Spark Gap - the spark gap doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. We
pulled a second wire off the two posts from the transformer and the
spark gap was not connected in-line with anything. This is how our
plans show this is supposed to be done.

It sparked at the spark gap
Bottle glowed purple
florescent light lit up
...No streamers.

We have to be close. Doesn't that florescent light glowing suggest I'm
getting power up there?

the toroid is made from a piece of semi-rigid aluminum duct attached
to a 5-gallon paint buck lid to hold it's shape. We connected the
toroid using an a plastic toilet flange connected to that 5-gallon
bucket lid. The tolet flange fits right onto the 4" PVC pipe we used
for the secondary coil.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: TESLA COIL ~ First Fire-Up
    ... for the bottle capacitor had two wires running down inside the bottle ... He's re-doing the bottle capacitor with only a single ... We did shave the coating off the magnet wire. ... >with the toroid before it goes to school. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: TESLA COIL ~ First Fire-Up
    ... that's just corona (air excited into glowing ... >> sparking between the magnet wire and the connection to to toroid. ... 2mm on our spark gap. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: Hand Tool for Winding Toroid Cores
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  • Re: TESLA COIL ~ First Fire-Up
    ... the bottles started to glow purple. ... > sparking between the magnet wire and the connection to to toroid. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)
  • Re: TESLA COIL ~ First Fire-Up
    ... that corona is power wasted instead of going to the secondary. ... >>the toroid indicates a poor electrical connection. ... How do I do that without messing up the wire? ... >> Might be too large a gap. ...
    (sci.electronics.basics)