Has anyone here made their own Tesla Coil?

After coming across them a few years ago, I've wanted to play with one. I figure now after I dabble for a bit with DIY lasers I'll tackle the coil next.
So I was curious, anyone here made their own, either from a kit, or scratch, or even had an preassembled model?

Many years ago, 15kv @ 30ma neon sign transformer to plate glass and aluminum foil capacitor to spark gap to primary of 12 AWG on 5 gallon bucket form inductively coupled to 24AWG secondary wound on 3" PVC pipe. Could get 18" to 24" arcs when it ran well. The primary voltage and available current is deadly, utilize the utmost caution when building similar designs.



The best and simplest is a small SSTC I also built using 12vac transformer with full wave bridge and large filter caps feeding a pair of TO-3 2n3055 transistors feeding a primary winding added to a flyback transformer from an old 25" tube TV, a feedback winding is used to turn off the transistors, could pull 3" to 4" arcs on that one, would light up fluorescent tubes ok and I made an ION rotor motor for it, it looked pretty cool with a globe style clear glass light bulb as well, plasma discharge was blue purple.

I started making one 2 years ago. Unfortunately I also had a very bad experience when a related high voltage experiment when bad and deterred me from finishing the tesla coil.

I once took a nasty hit from that neon sign transformer, it knocked me out and i woke up about ten feet back from where I started. I was making an adjustment on the transformer when I slipped and grasped down on the wired remote switch turning on the 120v input to the transformer, i was hit by 7500v (the secondary midpoint was grounded) across my body, lucky to have survived that one.

i dont say this lightly but please read.

electricity is dangerous. not just high voltage. 480 is really bad too. i was in an electrical explosion when a 480volt panel blew up. it was estimated 10 second long fire ball. blew the skin off of my arm and legs. my grandpa caused it. the electricity traveled through his body and went to ground by blowing the tipp off of his steel toe work boots.

Ive made many, one of the first is in my sig .

If want to buy kits go to Eastern Voltage Research - Electronic Kits, Tesla Coil Kits, Home of the DRSSTC but you shouldn't build a coil if you do not know how electricity behaves. They got cool SSTC and DRSSTC kits as well as audio modulators. They got some other cool kits as well, I have the lightning detector and it works really well.

I've built a few. Best is a simple sg tc with a neon transformer. So simple to make and you don't need any exotic parts other than the capacitors.

Here are some pics of my coil, I built it myself from the "Micro Mini Mite" kit from Amazing1. Link here

Here is the outside:



View of the guts:



And a veiw showing my crappy soldering skills.

Yea, Robert E Iannini is pretty amazing, my SSTC plan came from one of his books, Build Your Own Laser, Phaser, Ion Ray Gun and Other Working Space Age Projects, he has a few others, most of the plans on his site can be found in his various books.