Anyone built a Tesla Coil?

[ki4jgt]

I'm wanting to build a Tesla Coil. We tried it in Electronics in HS, we were going to hook it up to a sound output of some kind and have it where it would produce music. We never could get it to work. Now I actually want to try it again. Is there someone who has accomplished the feat and would mind showing me an instruction that would actually work? P.S. I'm also taking pointers :-)

[Evil-Ernie]

I would love to build a Tesla coil, but I wont for the simple fact of my haphazard nature towards projects I would end up fried! LOL

Good luck! Sounds like a cool project if you can pull it off :D

[ki4jgt]

Well, our group, probably something I did already messed it up in HS. I just wanted to try for it again and maybe fry myself this time :-)

[Random_Dude]

Tesla Coils are awesome!
I wish I could build one, but my lack of time and experience prevents me from doing it. Maybe it's better this way, those things can be quite dangerous so be careful. ;)

Cheers :cool:

[Evil-Ernie]

I just wanted to try for it again and maybe fry myself this time :-)

Nothing like the risk of becoming a smoldering corpse to sharpen up your electronics skills! LOL

[ki4jgt]

Well, in theory, I'm supposed to know all this stuff anyway. The KI4JGT thing requires a test to get the license. But a part of me was only interested in getting the license and not studying the material as much, so I sort of just memorized the questions :-) Now that I'm actually wanting to get back into the hobby. I want to get into the stuff too :-)

[MoebusNet]

If you look into it, a Tesla coil is really only an auto-transformer with the high and low-voltage windings sharing a common connection. The construction parameters are really a function of how high you want the secondary winding voltage to be, thus dictating the insulating requirements.

If you're just looking to generate some high-voltage AC to jump a spark gap and generate random noise frequencies, an ordinary 12-volt automobile coil can generate 25,000 volts without any difficulty. Instead of powering it with 12-volt interrupted DC you might be able to come up with a (120-volt AC in, 12-volt AC out) doorbell transformer to power it.

Should be cheap and easy to try, anyway.