2006.03.16: El Carl (Tesla Coil)
2006-03-16 22:31 by Ian
Building a Tesla coil is just one of those things you've got to do, right?
My sister named this one "El Carl". It was built in a few days during my Spring Break. It ran badly for a handful of seconds before the capacitor failed from internal arc. But if it hadn't been that, it would have been the spark gap. My heat-sinking was insufficient for the power, and the plastic would have melted shartly into the unrealized future.
No big write-up for this, other than some construction notes.
Microwave ovens are fantastically dangerous machines once you rip the cover off. El Carl had two pairs of ganged MOTs. One pair is to give a primary input voltage double that of a single MOT, and the other pair is arranged as an inductive current-limiter.
The capacitor was made with HDPE sheet and aluminum flashing. It failed.
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