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help
Posted by Gabriel on 7/26/2005, 10:39 am
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Re: help
Posted by Bert Hickman on 7/26/2005, 11:51 am, in reply to "help" Hello Gabriel, Unfortunately, pre-made Tesla Coils tend to be over priced, and you really don't learn very much by buying a pre-made coil. And, most folks won't sell a Tesla coil to someone younger than 18 to liability concerns. Fortunately, many parts of a Tesla Coil can be scrounged fairly easily - the coil form is typically PVC pipe, but even a cardboard tube can be used if first carefully dried and then coated with polyurethane varnish. An inexpensive toroid can be made from 3" aluminum dryer duct (available at Home Depot) and a pair of pie pans. Or you can use a small styrofoam wreath shape (from a craft store) and then carefully covering it with aluminum tape (Home Depot - heating/cooling supplies section). Finding small diameter insulated wire for the secondary can be a bit tricky. Good prices for wire can sometimes be found on eBay or at local electronic flea markets called Ham Fests (see http://www.arrl.org/hamfests.html to find out if there will be any near you). Inexpensive "salt water caps" can be made using glass bottles (typically beer bottles), aluminum foil and salt water. The spark gap can be made from a few pieces of small copper pipe joints (the small 1.5" - 2" long pieces used to join pieces of copper pipe together). Plain old house wire (#12 or 14 AWG) can be used to make a primary winding - this is fairly inexpensive at Home Depot. Polyethylene or Polypropylene sheet material (excellent for holding and insulating the primary winding and other HV portions of your coil) can be made curring and drilling plastic cutting board material. Probably the most difficult part may be the high voltage transformer. Many beginners use neon sign transformers (NST's) or ignition coils. Sometimes local neon sign makers will sell small used NST's for little money or they may even give them away. An ignition coil will need a low voltage source (a battery, step down transformer, or DC power supply) and a method for generating pulsating DC (a power transistor circuit or vibrator switch/relay). You can use Google to search for ignition coil circuits by searching on "ignition coil driver". Half the fun of coiling is in scrounging parts at little cost ,or even for free, and in finding alternative "dual use" Tesla Coil applications for common items. Good luck and best wishes, Bert
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