Build a Tesla Coil (the way Tesla built them)

[Allcanadian]

I find it strange that most people have literally no idea what a Tesla coil is supposed to do...

For example, Tesla basically said if the coil is producing any corona or sparks your doing it all wrong. Yet for many producing pretty sparks is all they do, take away the sparks and they have nothing. Don't get me wrong I built many Tesla coils well over 500 kV blowing arcs all over the place. However after the thrill wore off I got bored and thought it was kind of useless. So we made a toy to produce sparks, now what?.

Tesla wasn't interested in toys and he designed his system to research other phenomena.
1. The transmission of power over long distances.
2. The energy magnification process or free energy.
3. Exotic field structures like ball lightning and particle beams.
4. Medical device similar to the Rife devices.

So which generating sparks are neat that's not where the real action is.

Regards
AC

[Hakasays]

Well said Allcanadian.

Personally I think it's a combination of two factors.

- One is the 'mind-virus' that prevent even EE's from understanding what we're playing with.   When you can't model or even conceive weird actions like 'voltage multiplying action in a single coil' you have no map and no compass to navigate Tesla's world.   (Tesla was partly to blame as he did little to bridge the engineering gap to mathematics like Steinmetz and Thompson and Heaviside did.)

- The other factor is that impulse electricity is basically EMP-in-a-can that's somewhat incompatible with modern solid-state electronics.   Not an insurmountable problem, but difficult enough that amateurs will usually spend their first couple years popping mosfets (guilty!) .

[Hakasays]

Doing some more weekend experiments with a colleague.
Bulb ignites at only 5 watts which makes it quite an efficient setup all-things-considered.
The Poissor layers start to form between each plate and the 'null' zone as the mercury vapor plasma heats up.

https://www.bitchute.com/channel/id46wuE5Uc8b/

[polyrhythm]

Love your work Hakasays. I've played with quarter wave resonators quite a bit, super interesting occurrences can be witnessed. Playing around with using an AV plug as the top load capacitance was one that I found interesting. Had one EE professor ask me what the trick was when I demonstrated it to him.

Following along with interest!

[Hakasays]

Thanks for the kind words Poly

Had one EE professor ask me what the trick was when I demonstrated it to him.

I remember asking Eric last year about the coil below, "So which coil is the primary and which is the secondary?"
The answer was that each half was just one single concatenated coil.   No primaries, no secondaries, just a pair of 'extra' coils pointed toward each-other.
Then seeing them lighting a florescent bulb over a foot away connected to a function generator kinda blew my mind.   It had to be hundreds if not thousands of volts of potential to energize a coil like that at such a distance, likely at less than a watt.  It simply demanded deeper pursuit.

I mean how could such a simple setup elude 99.99% of us for so long?  It almost boggles the mind.


As a small update, things are slowing down as I prep for conference-season; we're trying to do a few last-minute tweaks to the online coil calculator so Q and characteristic impedance can be predicted more accurately.  Probably not though; epiphanies like that come in fits and starts.

[Allcanadian]

Hakasays

Personally I think it's a combination of two factors.

- One is the 'mind-virus' that prevent even EE's from understanding what we're playing with.   When you can't model or even conceive weird actions like 'voltage multiplying action in a single coil' you have no map and no compass to navigate Tesla's world.   (Tesla was partly to blame as he did little to bridge the engineering gap to mathematics like Steinmetz and Thompson and Heaviside did.)

- The other factor is that impulse electricity is basically EMP-in-a-can that's somewhat incompatible with modern solid-state electronics.   Not an insurmountable problem, but difficult enough that amateurs will usually spend their first couple years popping mosfets (guilty!)

I agree and it's beyond me how so many people cannot seem to understand this stuff when it's not that difficult.

For example, a very high current impulse can produce a Z pinch/physical contraction because parallel currents attract. The alter ego is that a very fast rise to high potential can produce repulsion due to coulomb forces. The extreme version is what Tesla called "radiant matter" as the surface layer is physically torn apart ejecting particulate charged material. It's so simple even a child can understand it, like charges repel and if the charge/force is great enough the stuff holding the charge will tear itself apart due to repulsion. There's literally only one direction the stuff can go which is outward, hence the term Radiant(moving outward from a point)matter(material stuff).

You seem pretty cool and the kind of guy who likes to build stuff like myself so I will explain how it's done.
1)Charge a fast discharging capacitor to the highest voltage you can, 300kV minimum. I use DIY HV plate capacitors.
2)Discharge said capacitor through a interrupted and quenched spark gap to prevent pre-ionization so it discharges all at once, a true impulse.
3)Discharge the energy into a single object of limited volume not attached to ground. Like a sphere top load.

Here's the kicker, the only real requirement which most people missed is that the potential rises faster than the materials ability to conduct/disperse it. Logically the inability of the charge to conduct/disperse must increase the local charge density, which increases the local repulsive coulomb forces, which starts tearing the charged surface material apart, which ejects the charged material from said surface by repulsion at high velocity. So it's basically a glorified electrostatic pea shooter for small particles ejected from a solid surface. Tesla's Radiant Matter is literally grade school science...

Regards
AC

[polyrhythm]

I remember asking Eric last year about the coil below, "So which coil is the primary and which is the secondary?"
The answer was that each half was just one single concatenated coil.   No primaries, no secondaries, just a pair of 'extra' coils pointed toward each-other.
Then seeing them lighting a florescent bulb over a foot away connected to a function generator kinda blew my mind.   It had to be hundreds if not thousands of volts of potential to energize a coil like that at such a distance, likely at less than a watt.  It simply demanded deeper pursuit.

I mean how could such a simple setup elude 99.99% of us for so long?  It almost boggles the mind.

That's cool you got to goto the conference last year. I was there the year before and spent most of my time mucking around with the Colorado Springs coil with Eric and a few others. I would have loved to have seen the demonstration.

When I first started playing with quarter wave resonators I wound them terribly with lots of inter turn capacitance. When mucking around with some AV plugs and LEDs I found that after stringing enough of them together I would get a belt when I touched it. I realized i could get sparks out at around 3/4 mm, with the voltage/power inputs I was dealing with I was shocked (pardon the pun) and did more research from there. Certainly not as impressive as Eric's demonstration but it certainly got me thinking.

I'm feeling a draw back to that line of research talking about it and seeing your posts.

[Hakasays]

I was organizing some old videos and realized I hadn't processed+published this one yet.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/CDJk3G3uwz4o/

I didn't have a proper RF SWR/wattmeter at the time that would read accurately below 5 watts, but performing the same test in May with the same  measured 0.24 to 0.28 watts at peak resonance.  Analog 5w RF meter deflection would seem to agree with this.

As an aside, my live presentation 'Build a Tesla Coil' is set for Thursday, but besides some live demos is mostly a rehash of what I have presented here already.

[Hakasays]

Just finishing my 'borehole to hell' project, trying to get a very low impedance ground to serve as a foundation for some higher-level Tesla telluric experiments.

We performed an experiment in June where I successfully received radio signals from ~200mi away by tossing a ground strap into the ocean and using that as an antenna.  This taught me that the only way I am likely to get success with these setups is by cracking down past water table to get that magic sub-1-ohm impedance.

It took a lot of experimentation and a few different techniques to get all the way to 27ft, and by the end it was just smashing a ground-rod driver until my arms were noodles, rinse and repeat for a few days.   My body is shot, but the deed is done


BTW the conference early July went well, I got my lecture out and nothing exploded.  Ended up playing wingman on a few other demos since I was the one with the 2kw HF amplifier.    In total was on-stage about 3-4hrs over the course of the week.  First was the worst, had to 'break the seal'
I plan on doing a repeat presentation in the shop sometime this month, both to go into a little more detail and cover some tangents I forgot on-stage, and to more properly showcase the demos presented.

[AlienGrey]

Hi hakasays nice device build any chance of some build info, if you dont want to put too much info on here
i'm on skype please let me know. regards Sil

[Hakasays]

@AlienGrey I'll tell you as much as I know.  In retrospect I really should have taken precise measurements of every coil so I could use them to improve the calculator, but alas these meetups become quite busy and hectic.

The setup you posted is Eric+Aaron's Cosmic Induction Generator style setup.

* It is a 'concatenated extra', so the white and copper coils both serve as one half of an Extra coil.  The left half is one extra coil, the right half is the other extra coil.

* The copper coil is the current coil and is slightly wider than 1:1 height-width ratio.  The white coil is the potential coil and it is slightly taller than 1:1 height-width ratio.
* Coils are wound in opposition (one wound CW, the other CCW).  Each coil 'half' is wound the same direction.
* The current coils by themselves resonate around 7000-9000 kc depending on spacing with a magnification factor (q factor) of around 370.
* The coils together resonate around 5600kc with a magnification factor around 520 (!!).
* The coil impedance combined is around 200-400 ohm, so they are driven with a matching/coupling transformer/balun to match to the HF transmitter.
* The end rings serve to help balance/distribute the dielectric field in each section.  Not required but they slightly improve stability.




If you're trying to wind a coil yourself,
Use my coil calculator here:   https://hakasays.com/DollardTeslaCoilCalculator
General build style/dimensions here:   https://hakasays.com/blog/tesla-highvoltage/build-a-tesla-coil-design-and-construction/

* Play with the values and try to get wire spacing as close to 'ideal wire spacing' as practical for peak efficiency.
* Try to keep the height-diameter ratio around 1:1 or a little taller.
* For peak efficiency coils I would use RG316 cable for everything now (using the outer jacket as the conductor).  It's silver plated, has a crazy low resistance, effective wire gauge of 10awg, and is widely available many different places.   If not, be sure to use 20awg or thicker as the coil depends on high surface area for both resistance and the dielectric interaction.

With the above and a good open frame you should easily be able to get Q factor of 150+ in a single coil, or 250+ in 'cosmic induction' style.

I don't maintain a Skype presence, but I am on Discord quite often @ Hakasays#7694 if you want to chat sometime    I'm always happy to help others get up-to-speed.

[Hakasays]

Well my lecture's posted, if anyone's interested;)
https://emediapress.com/shop/build-a-tesla-coil-the-way-tesla-built-them/
Demo clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4e_mjxbcyg

Overall I think it went pretty good, especially for first time ever onstage.   There were a few more side tangents I wanted to hit but didn't; I think the stress kept me pinned to the slides a bit.  The demos turned out good, even though you couldn't really see the last one.

[Chet K]

👍
Very good presentation!
I hope you make many more ... public speaking works best when you
are passionate about the subject!
as you obviously are
Thanks for sharing!
Chet

[Centraflow]

I second that

Regards

Mike

[Hakasays]

Thanks guys.  I suppose I've 'broken the seal' now, so I could probably do much more in-depth lectures in the future.
Maybe next up is gonna have to be the dreaded 4hr lecture on on Parametric Variation.....

[Hakasays]

https://emediapress.com/shop/panel-discussions-2022/

Panel discussion follow-up just posted.  This one's a freebie if anyone's interested.

Dr Adrian Marsh commanded this one, as among us there he has had the most success and the most articulate process for testing+tuning.
I learned how to use a Vector Network Analyzer thanks to his talk that week.