My Plasma Speaker!

Good stuff, i know what you mean, they are pure show off & experiment kind of things.

My next little project is a Marx Generator, you familiar with them?

Yeap, was gonna build one a while ago and even got some parts, but getting the spark gaps right was a PITA!

haha dam, hope mine isnt too hard! aiming for 180kV

You'll get waaayyy more than that with this tesla coil, infact almost 900kV

Much lower current though, this probably won't kill you if you touch it

hehe excellent!

900kV!!! Wait a tic, what tesla coil are we referring to here?

Touch it Touch it :eg:

Things said:

You'll get waaayyy more than that with this tesla coil, infact almost 900kV

Much lower current though, this probably won't kill you if you touch it

Click to expand...

Hehe, I've had my share of tesla coil touching!!

The reason you can touch Tesla coil outputs and not scream in pain is because the nerve endings all over your body stop responding above 1khz I think... And that's for true AC, not pulses.

However, while you don't feel the pain, you can still get RF burns which are very painful. It basically cooks little spots of your skin wherever the arc strikes. You can see them as small black dots.

Also, Tesla Coils do not step up that much voltage.... I think for most average sized coils they go up to 400-500kV. Nowhere near 1 megavolt.

And marx generators are pretty awesome. CW multipliers are even cooler, because the rep rate is continuous enough that you can draw arcs from one! That and you don't have to worry about adjusting spark gaps.



Just thought I'd add that stuff in.

Le Quack said:

The reason you can touch Tesla coil outputs and not scream in pain is because the nerve endings all over your body stop responding above 1khz I think... And that's for true AC, not pulses.

However, while you don't feel the pain, you can still get RF burns which are very painful. It basically cooks little spots of your skin wherever the arc strikes. You can see them as small black dots.

Also, Tesla Coils do not step up that much voltage.... I think for most average sized coils they go up to 400-500kV. Nowhere near 1 megavolt.

And marx generators are pretty awesome. CW multipliers are even cooler, because the rep rate is continuous enough that you can draw arcs from one! That and you don't have to worry about adjusting spark gaps.



Just thought I'd add that stuff in.

Click to expand...

Well, assuming in the best case conditions that 1.1kV gives you a 1mm spark, then 90cm streamers should mean you have about 990kV. However sometimes with tesla coils the sparks use the previous ionization passage, so need less voltage for longer sparks.

And yes, the reaosn you can't feel the shock is because the frequency is too high. However you can still feel the DC charge that has built up on the toroid. The zap I got from that coil in the above pic felt a bit like one of those little BBQ piezo igniters. It didn't really have enough output current or run at a high enough BPS rate to cause RF burns. You could stand there and hold your hand in the sparks for 5 minutes and all you'd end up with was a tingling arm

Not that I'd recommend it, it would probably get a bit painful after 5 minutes.

This is the coil in the pic:


Can't remember it's exact size, but the monitor in the background is 19" for comparison. so only a baby one.

That isn't saying I recommend touching tesla coil sparks. There are a LOT of factors to take into account before you can deem it safe, and even then people with embedded electronic devices like pacemakers could be seriously injured or killed because of the disruptive pulse to the device.

Haven't heard much from aautomation about the new coil yet, but he's been pretty busy with work. I also need to recoup some funds so I can purchase the coil I agreed to from him. Damn groceries are expensive!

Nice coil Dan. Did you build that??

Yes and no

It was a kit from "aautomation" on eBay. All the parts come pre-made except for the PCB, so you solder all the components on, screw everything together, tune it etc, but all the acrylic parts are laser cut from the kit. It was an awesome little coil.

Still a nice coil. I like the size. You could even travel with it.

We need some moar arc porn. :yh:

Bit of a PITA getting good photos of the sparks because they're so quick and dim, so most of these are video caps







Was great at transmitting power. That CFL I was holding was about 40cm from the coil.





Got a much better camera now though, so should be able to get some nice snaps if/when I get his new coil

thats so yumm!

Ive emailed aautomation a few times but hes never replied to any of my ebay msg's

That is one NICE TC!!!

Aautomation doesn't have any up for sale now, but the price for his new one is too much for me haha. How much is/was the old kit, the one you made?