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salvaged tesla coil * 1
    #23400119 -

hi guys.



so i salvaged a nice old Transco 9kV 30mA neon sign transformer from an old junk sign.  i was given a secondary coil and some really old high voltage wire that i used as a primary, but i'm lazy so i still haven't counted the turns on the secondary - i will if i decide to rebuild the primary using some #4 solid wire or 1/4" copper tubing. 

i took some quart mason jars that i had in abundance (imagine that) and wrapped them in hvac tape, as uniformly as possible, and used 1/4-20 threaded rod as electrodes through plastic lids, with nuts/locknuts/fender washers to hold everything into place.  the nuts and washers worked nicely to hold wires in place as well.  i folded several sheets of heavy duty aluminum foil and taped them together and then stripped a very long section of #10awg stranded wire and foil taped that to all of the aluminum, which all fit inside the mason jar box i had.  while i haven't tried one other meter i have, i still haven't been able to get a good capacitance measurement using my workhorse meter (fluke 325) because i don't think it's sensitive enough for that application.  regardless, the saltwater caps appear to work nicely despite a fair amount of coronal losses.  the spark gap changes intensity dramatically when i add/remove capacitors.

for a spark gap, i got really lazy and just cut the tops off a Jacob's ladder i was playing with before i undertook this project.  i curled the leads inward and adjust them with pliers or by hand as needed, but it's just two pieces of bare #4 copper wire pointed at each other and stapled to a block of wood.  i use split bolt connectors to do most connections that i can't do with wirenuts.  i realize that using regular 600v rated stranded thwn and wirenuts is probably also contributing to losses, and i definitely notice the voltage bleeding through the insulation sometimes if it gets a ground path.

i ran a piece of #10 from the loft and did my best to crimp it to a metal fence post driven well into the ground outside the building, as my RF ground, which is attached to the bottom of the secondary.  I have a wire made in parallel with the RF ground that I use to attach to things like big clear incandescent bulbs and electrodes for experimentation, but i'm honestly not sure that my RF ground is quite good enough.

I made a few crappy videos using my phone, which makes me a little nervous getting it that close to the entire thing, but I was able to get some decent shots of the bigger arcs.  I have no idea how much voltage was coming out of the top side, I don't have the equipment needed to test voltages that high.

new video, posted at the top of the list:






Edited by idiotek (07/28/16 10:34 AM)

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23400260 -

Damn dude. I'm not meaning to shitpost your thread but I wish I was a fucking rocket scientist too. God damn I barely know how to make a monotub, I didn't understand even half of the poetic shakespeare shit that just came out of that post.


I'm giving you 5 just because I found this impressive. Maybe it's the weed


--------------------
How to get started in bulk:
Presto 23-Quart Pressure Cooker
BOD's Simple as FUCK Still Air Box
PastyWhyte's Easy Agar Tek
Munchauzen's Cultivation Video Series
How EvilMushroom666 Prepares His Grains (I use jars with Synthetic Filter Discs)
What is G2G? (Grain-to-Grain)
Damion5050's Coir Tek (I use 5.5 - 6 quarts of water instead of 4. Also ignore step 13 and ignore the monotub completely. The only purpose of this tek is to show you how to make a simple substrate. I also add gypsum to it but not necessary)
Spitball's Monotub Tek (A liner isn't necessary but is useful)
Use 6500k lights throughout the whole process. When you wake up, turn the light on. When you go to sleep turn the light off. It's as simple as that.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23400272 -

Very cool indeed. :thumbup:

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: Kush_Zombie]
    #23400339 -

Kush_Zombie said:
Damn dude. I'm not meaning to shitpost your thread but I wish I was a fucking rocket scientist too. God damn I barely know how to make a monotub, I didn't understand even half of the poetic shakespeare shit that just came out of that post.


I'm giving you 5 just because I found this impressive. Maybe it's the weed


No worries, I appreciate the kind words.  It's all mostly just shit I've looked up using Google and stuff like that.  I got very lucky to score that secondary coil already wound, otherwise I would not have bothered with this project yet.  Winding a coil that big would be a huge pain in the ass and I have a tendency to be lazy.  I was also lucky to score the transformer in that condition. 

Thanks for the rating.  I'll try to post some cool photos of it in action later.

Le_Canard said:
Very cool indeed. :thumbup:



Thanks le duk.  Hope you're doing well!

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23400351 -

I took one other video last night before I made some spark gap adjustments that actually made it a little better.  The videos don't do it justice at all, so I'll work on finding a better camera or something.  The conditions are not conducive to easy photography while still operating the power switch either.  You can sort of hear the spark gap struggling to fire in this one.


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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23407565 -

was hoping to get some input from other coilers or tinkerers but there's always more time i guess.

here's another video i took a few minutes ago, couldn't find another good digital camera so i said fuck it and used my phone and it still seems be ok, so maybe they are better shielded or something, i don't know.


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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23409459 -

I think I just need like an old round brass doorknob for a top load terminal and it would give better/longer sparks.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23409474 -

Dude that is fucking awesome. What is it supposed to do? Or are you just tinkering around? I'm not exactly sure what a tesla coil is for. Can you transfer it into stupid language for me?
But that looks fucking sick.


--------------------
How to get started in bulk:
Presto 23-Quart Pressure Cooker
BOD's Simple as FUCK Still Air Box
PastyWhyte's Easy Agar Tek
Munchauzen's Cultivation Video Series
How EvilMushroom666 Prepares His Grains (I use jars with Synthetic Filter Discs)
What is G2G? (Grain-to-Grain)
Damion5050's Coir Tek (I use 5.5 - 6 quarts of water instead of 4. Also ignore step 13 and ignore the monotub completely. The only purpose of this tek is to show you how to make a simple substrate. I also add gypsum to it but not necessary)
Spitball's Monotub Tek (A liner isn't necessary but is useful)
Use 6500k lights throughout the whole process. When you wake up, turn the light on. When you go to sleep turn the light off. It's as simple as that.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: Kush_Zombie]
    #23409492 -

A Tesla coil is a resonant transformer circuit that uses the resonant oscillations between a capacitor and an inductor to generate high frequency bursts of extremely high voltage.  The inductor in the circuit happens to be the primary coil of an air core transformer, whose secondary is wound with many many turns of small wire.  When the primary coil is hit with a burst of power from the capacitors jumping the spark gap, it "rings" like a tuning fork, figureatively.  The power moves back and forth between the primary and the cap bank at tens of thousnands of times per second.  I think it's between 20 and 100khz.  Low radio frequency. 

The magnetic lines of force (flux) is expanding/collapsing with enough speed and timing to generate large amounts of voltage in the secondary coil if it's positioned correctly with the primary coil.  This results in the top discharging large fountains of sparks that can short to ground or whatever to make big bolts of energy.  It wish I had a measurement tool to read the voltage off the top, though I'd guess it's something near 100kv or so, I don't really know.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23409510 -

Do you have any mushrooms nearby? I know this sounds silly but I've had this theory that mushrooms are a very high energy that can be tapped into to produce unlimited amounts of electricity. Could just be hippie mumbo jumbo but you seem like you're having fun experimenting anyways.


--------------------
How to get started in bulk:
Presto 23-Quart Pressure Cooker
BOD's Simple as FUCK Still Air Box
PastyWhyte's Easy Agar Tek
Munchauzen's Cultivation Video Series
How EvilMushroom666 Prepares His Grains (I use jars with Synthetic Filter Discs)
What is G2G? (Grain-to-Grain)
Damion5050's Coir Tek (I use 5.5 - 6 quarts of water instead of 4. Also ignore step 13 and ignore the monotub completely. The only purpose of this tek is to show you how to make a simple substrate. I also add gypsum to it but not necessary)
Spitball's Monotub Tek (A liner isn't necessary but is useful)
Use 6500k lights throughout the whole process. When you wake up, turn the light on. When you go to sleep turn the light off. It's as simple as that.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23409512 -

I've been thinking of ways to try to use the discharge voltage to drive some other kind of oscillator or something but I'm pretty sure it would just burn up a wire or something.  There are drawings for Tesla Mangnifying Transmitters out there where I could use my secondary as a tertiary coil that is attached to the topload of a smaller coil, wound with bigger wire, something I could possibly do myself using more easily available wire on something like a couple of buckets taped together.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: Kush_Zombie]
    #23409514 -

Kush_Zombie said:
Do you have any mushrooms nearby? I know this sounds silly but I've had this theory that mushrooms are a very high energy that can be tapped into to produce unlimited amounts of electricity. Could just be hippie mumbo jumbo but you seem like you're having fun experimenting anyways.


There are some, not as many as I'd like.  I'm not sure what kind of power they could generate, I've been interested in how they transfer power/energy throughout their own organism though.  No idea whether it has anything to do with what we're talking about though.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23409521 -

Hang on I have this book somewhere that shows a tool that was found inside of pyramid that was possibly used to produce electricity. The design was fairly simple and it seems like something you might could find some interest in. Hopefully I can find it.


--------------------
How to get started in bulk:
Presto 23-Quart Pressure Cooker
BOD's Simple as FUCK Still Air Box
PastyWhyte's Easy Agar Tek
Munchauzen's Cultivation Video Series
How EvilMushroom666 Prepares His Grains (I use jars with Synthetic Filter Discs)
What is G2G? (Grain-to-Grain)
Damion5050's Coir Tek (I use 5.5 - 6 quarts of water instead of 4. Also ignore step 13 and ignore the monotub completely. The only purpose of this tek is to show you how to make a simple substrate. I also add gypsum to it but not necessary)
Spitball's Monotub Tek (A liner isn't necessary but is useful)
Use 6500k lights throughout the whole process. When you wake up, turn the light on. When you go to sleep turn the light off. It's as simple as that.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: Kush_Zombie]
    #23409522 -

Baghdad battery type thing?

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23409532 -



Yeah this thing


--------------------
How to get started in bulk:
Presto 23-Quart Pressure Cooker
BOD's Simple as FUCK Still Air Box
PastyWhyte's Easy Agar Tek
Munchauzen's Cultivation Video Series
How EvilMushroom666 Prepares His Grains (I use jars with Synthetic Filter Discs)
What is G2G? (Grain-to-Grain)
Damion5050's Coir Tek (I use 5.5 - 6 quarts of water instead of 4. Also ignore step 13 and ignore the monotub completely. The only purpose of this tek is to show you how to make a simple substrate. I also add gypsum to it but not necessary)
Spitball's Monotub Tek (A liner isn't necessary but is useful)
Use 6500k lights throughout the whole process. When you wake up, turn the light on. When you go to sleep turn the light off. It's as simple as that.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: Kush_Zombie]
    #23409689 -

It's like a primitive Leyden jar (though I'm not sure which is truly oldest).  I think they're generally considered to have been used either in electroplating things with gold, or for sealing and holding scrolls, etc.  I think some basic modifications to the design leave you with something similar to what I'm using as a capacitor in my circuit.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek] * 1
    #23413039 -

Geoff Peterson said:
I think I just need like an old round brass doorknob for a top load terminal and it would give better/longer sparks.


I may have something just like this. Not a doorknob but I think I have a pair of old brass bedpost knobs around somewhere.

Cool project. I can relate to not wanting to wind your own coil. I've only done it once on a small coil for an adjustable wax pen. What a pain in the ass!

Anyways, if I can find the bedpost knobs, and if that would work for you, I'll let you know.


--------------------
I'd like to think I'm smart enough to realize how much knowledge I don't have.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: Psychedelic Pupil]
    #23415973 -

They probably would (measurements help) but I'd be willing to buy or trade for them.  Just let me know!  Thanks.

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek] * 1
    #23417951 -

Exposure to pulsed high voltage has been shown to stimulate fruit body formation in some species of fungi. Could be fun to reproduce their results on a small scale. Then, once your rig has been shown to be effective, you could try it out on psychoactive species :laugh: I mean, you could go straight to psychoactive species, but you won't know if negative results are due to the fungi or your machine.

Their setup was different, utilizing just inductive spikes. Do you think you could get a spark? I've studied transient response in active circuits, but I've never looked into Tesla coils. Is one side of the gap a plain old anode that you could put in contact with a substrate?

Source
http://www.iesj.org/html/service/ijpest/vol4_no2_2010/IJPEST_Vol4_No2_03_pp108-112.pdf


Edit
Here's an article on the subject that's arguably more fun to read:
http://blog.mycology.cornell.edu/2013/01/20/zap-lightning-gods-and-mushrooms/

And its bibliography
1. S. Tsukamoto, H. Kudoh, S. Ohga, K. Yamamoto, and H. Akiyama, “Development of an automatic electrical stimulator for mushroom sawdust bottle,” in Proceeding of the 15th Pulsed Power Conference, pp. 1437–1440, Monterey, Calif, USA, June 2005
2. R.G. Wasson. “Soma: Divine Mushroom of Immortality.” 1968.
3. F. Islam and S. Ohga, “The response of fruit body formation on Tricholoma matsutake in situ condition by applying electric pulse stimulator,” ISRN Agronomy, vol. 2012, Article ID 462724, 6 pages, 2012. doi:10.5402/2012/462724
4. K. R. Robinson, “The responses of cells to electrical fields: a review,” Journal of Cell Biology, vol. 101(6): 2023–2027, 1985.
5. S. Tsukamoto, T. Maeda, M. Ikeda, and H. Akiyama, “Application of pulsed power to mushroom culturing,” in Proceedings of the 14th IEEE International Pulsed Power Conference, pp. 1116–1119, Dallas, Texas, USA, June 2003.
6. W. R. Adey, “Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields,” in Journal of Cellular Biochemistry 51:410-416. 1993.
7. S. Ohga and S. Iida. “Effect of electric impulse on sporocarp formation of ectomycorrhizal fungus Laccaria laccata in Japanese red pine plantation.” J. Forest Res. 6: 37-41. 2001.

Double Edit
Quote from the first paper. This is so cool.

After charging up the capacitor, the gap switch
GS was triggered externally. The closing switch GS
changed the connection of the capacitors from parallel to
series. As a result, the voltage was stepped up from VC to
4 VC in same manner to the Marx generator


--------------------


Living on a no-Flash diet is way easier than you think. Give it a shot.

Edited by Bacchus (07/06/16 06:48 PM)

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Re: salvaged tesla coil [Re: idiotek]
    #23419784 -

Geoff Peterson said:
They probably would (measurements help) but I'd be willing to buy or trade for them.  Just let me know!  Thanks.


I found them but unfortunately they are not brass. They were in a crate on a dirt floor garage and rusted up pretty good. I think they must have been cast iron from an old wood stove or something. Sorry I :frown:


--------------------
I'd like to think I'm smart enough to realize how much knowledge I don't have.

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General Interest > Science and Technology
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