Lab@Home Update: Tesla Coil, 99.5% Progress

Posted by HELiX

I tried to do some Physics today. Electric fields tutorial was incredibly unproductive, because I couldn’t concentrate. So I sat there and thought… electric fields… practical?

Enter the Tesla Coil.

6pm, I decided to drag my whole Tesla Coil setup outside. Fixed up some stuffs, set up the camera, warned my siblings/parents about the noise I was going to create, hammered in the ground rod…

By then, it was…

I always hate hammering the ground rod. My backyard garden qualifies as a golf course now.

And I fired it up!

Stupid me. I didn’t even connect the Primary Tap to the Primary Coil. The result? Serious sparking as the current attempts to complete the circuit.

What I found incredible was that, despite the energy loss in the sparking, the coil was running! See the top for the Breakout Point faintly arcing to the grounded rod on the right.

The breakout point is simply an uninteresting aluminium rod taped to the toroid. The streamers would erupt from this breakout point, rather than sparking around randomly.

So I fixed the Primary Tap problem and tried again.

Racing sparks appeared. This happens when there’s a spark from the primary coil to the secondary coil. And for over a while (through many attempts), it became a serious issue.

Racing sparks occur when a coil has one or more of the following:

• Overly high coupling
• Overpowered system
• Poor quenching in the spark gap
• Out of tune, too large toroid
• Overly large primary cap

Doesn’t matter which mine happens to fall into, but I didn’t like it.

Have a look.

And the most horrible one.

I had no choice but to change the level of the Primary Coil, making it lower. That would be dealing away with the PVC Pipes supports (which I spent lots of effort into) and going back to temporary supports.

And it worked perfect!

With everything FINALLY working (almost over an hour), it was time for tedious tuning.

I had to tune the Primary Coil’s frequency to match the Secondary Coil’s, so that they are in resonance, producing maximum power. This is done by changing the position of the Primary Tap at different points in the Primary Coil.

So I tuned…

(Primary Tap at Turn 3)

And I decided to place a Fluorescent Lamp next to the setup…

It’s completely not connected to anything. Just lying there.

And MAGIC!

Okay not really if you know a thing or two about electric fields.

The electric fields of Tesla Coils (yes, even the homemade ones) are know to be so powerful that it can interfere with TV signals (my Mum didn’t complain because we’re using cable) and render any digital devices you’re wearing useless. Science Center’s Tesla Coils are bounded with a Faraday’s Cage, as such.

After tuning for sometime…

And removing the breakout point…

More tuning…

And more tuning…

And back with the breakout point in position…

Usually, Tesla Coilers have to find the perfect number of turns to tap the Primary Coil at. Too many turns, or too little, resonance will not be achieved.

Mine was a different case. Let me tell you a story.

When I went out to purchase the components for my Coil, I bought the Flexible Copper Tubing to make the Primary Coil from some auntie. Previously, I was told that the price of copper has skyrocketed in recent years. She charged me $12 per meter, I bought $66 worth of it.

When I did my Primary Coil, it gave me 8 turns… which is quite little. But I guess, I couldn’t afford more.

One day, I was told that I could get the Copper Tubing at $25 for 50 foot. And that, the auntie cheated me.

Idiot. Moron. Byatch.

I could have gotten over twice the number of turns with $25, as compared to 8 miserable turns with $25.

Back to where we were… and so, I realised that the performance of the Tesla Coil increases with number of turns. At turn 7, a spark of 25cm was achieved.

So I had the Primary Tap at Turn 8, the maximum.

If I had a longer copper tubing, thus more turns in the primary coil, I should be able to pump out a lot more performance. It’s a big pity that the Primary Coil is limiting me from achieving resonance.

As much as I wanted to end the Tesla Coil project once and for all today, I think it’s wiser if I get a new longer tubing, and tune the Coil to it’s maximum performance, and not limited by the primary turns. So… this project will be extended… again.

Today’s maximum spark was about 25-27 cm! With my Coil at 450W, I should get at least 40-50 cm sparks…

But it’s the best performance so far.

The sound from the Tesla Coil is extremely frighteningly loud. I managd to run it quite a lot of times today (over 10 times, I believe) because the neighbours on the right were away from home. I forgotten about the neighbours on the left… so… they heard it, and thought it was their house alarm (Yes! THAT loud.). So they removed the batteries from their house alarm, and went back to doing their stuffs. Imagine what happened when they found me. Urggh.

Enjoy the pictures!

Comments(0) 2:23 AM 9 September 2007

Blog rank

Posted by HELiX

Just something to update this blog with.

For some reason I think I’m aware of, my blog has shot up to Blog Rank 51 at SingaporeBlog.net.

Amazing. I’ll be smashing my way into the top 50 soon.

Then again…

…

…

…

…not too soon if I continue to update with such entries.

Comments(0) 1:54 AM 9 September 2007

Comex 2007

Posted by HELiX

Let’s try to make sense of my Dad’s actions today.

…

So, we were at Comex IT Show @ Suntec Convention Hall.

He brought us to look around for colour laser printers. I thought he was just checking the prices to be up-to-date with the current market prices.

Fact Number One: My house crams 7 or 8 printers already. Depends on whether you count a partially working one.

Soon, he dived into very enthusiastic conversations with the salesmen. If history is of any indication, if I didn’t interrupt by saying “Dad, let’s go check out the other booths first…”, my Dad would have been extremely tempted to purchase whatever rubbish the salesmen were selling.

We went to Canon, HP, Epson and finally Brother.

Fact Number Two: My Dad bought an All-in-One Colour Laser Printer from Brother. At nearly $1500, it was their flagship printer and still is.

My Dad was looking at this… lower-end printer. It’s cheaper, lousier, less cost-effective and utterly pointless to buy. I mean, say, if you have graduated from college, would you go back to primary school to study? Such was the incredible stupidity of the situation.

A short while later, my Dad started asking the salesman about the payment, instalment plans, delivery, stock availability, and I knew that can’t be right.

Me: Dad, why do we need another colour laser printer?
Dad: Our current laser printer’s toner might run dry soon.
Me: Then we replace the toner.
Dad: What if you guys need it urgently?

[3 minutes later]

Me: Dad, seriously, we DON’T need another printer.
Dad: What if the current one runs out of-
Me: Then we still have 6 other inkjet printers.
Dad: But-
Me: But if the inkjet printer runs out of ink, we still have FIVE others-
Dad: Aiyaa, just buy lah. (with a tone of finality)

And he produced his credit card.

Idiot.

Never before I’m not supportive of my Dad upgrading the electronics in our house. But this is totally absurd. I’d bet he probably can’t find a place to put the new colour laser printer.

Comments(0) 1:50 AM 9 September 2007