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Tesla Coil Ideas?

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Krumlink

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I have been looking for Tesla Coil Ideas, and I found a few schemmy's that are easy, but other's have had me contradicting what I have found.

There are 2 way's of how to wind the primary as I have seen it, the Pancake and the Air Core type.

Do you think that a Flyback Transformer would be a good HV Transformer for it? As for The capacitor, I was going to use a Foil and Plexyglass type (plate Cap), but do you know of a good target capacitance it should be?
 
You can make a Tesla coil about as simple or sophisticated you want. When I made mine, I used a neon light transformer (which seem to be getting hard to find nowadays), an air-core primary wrapped on a Quaker Oats box, a spark gap from a couple of pieces of wire on a board, and a capacitor made of aluminum foil on the inside and outside of a large jar. There are several Tesla coil sites of which I am sure you are aware. They will have much more sophisticated designs. As for the pancake primary, they are harder to wind and are not necessary just to make it work -- your acrylic or polycarbonate plastic capacitor sounds good. You could try doing the simple way first. Then wind a pancake primary and compare results. John
 
Would wire insulation affect the transformer at all? I just want to be safe, as compared to spending half of my life winding it to find out that it doesn't work as well as stripped wire. This accounts for the Primary and maybe the secondary.

Thanks.
 
Krumlink said:
Would wire insulation affect the transformer at all? I just want to be safe, as compared to spending half of my life winding it to find out that it doesn't work as well as stripped wire. This accounts for the Primary and maybe the secondary.

Thanks.
Use insulated, single-strand wire for both the primary and secondary. In fact, you must use insulated wire for the secondary as the turns will be touching. BTW, I used an old fluorescent bulb for the secondary form. You may want to use something that won't break so easily, like acrylic tube or something. John
 
Yeah I was going to use around 1.5 to 3 inch PVC pipe for the secondary and a pancake coil for the primary (yeah I cheated :))
 
I suggest something like 32 AWG or bigger magnet wire for the secondary. Any finer than that, and it breaks too easily during winding. John

Edit: There is solderable and non-solderable magnet wire. A lot of the surplus stuff is non-solderable (or it isn't labeled clearly), so you have to scrape the insulation off.
 
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Well right now I am working on the PS for the Flyback transformer which I want to run at around 16V at a few amps, which is considerably better than the wall whore :)p) that I am currently using.

:)
 
Well now I have a dedicated 20VDC 3 Amp (roughly) Power Supply for the Flyback and Tesla, now all I need is the Tesla Coil itself :D
 
Driving the flyback is the easiest part!:D :D Winding the secondary will deffinately take a while, depending on how you do it. I wound a tiny little secondary and even that took me like 2 days to do. If you make a machine to spin the pvc while you are winding, it will be alot easier. I personally think that the capacitors are the hardest part, since they cost alot for the bought ones, and making them is a pain for me:D
 
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