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Twin Parallel Magnifying Tesla Coil
Updated Nov. 27, 2004
August 22, 2004 - 5" lower sphere installed with 24mil, 1/2" wide cu strapping
for the connections, ready for testing. The inside and outside of the sphere and
cu straps were thoroughly cleaned before assembly with a good metal cleaner and then the
surfaces were cleansed with acetone and then treated with
CaiShield S7 Metal Sealant and Protector (also
works on aluminum). Finally, the spheres merely press together but the
straps were soldered to the upper shell.
Today, November 16, 2004, I just checked the sphere/strap assembly and both are still shiny and look beautiful, this is almost 3 months later. Contact me regarding this substance if you're interested in getting some.
August 15, 2004
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I chose this design for the challenge and to have an interesting looking TC. I'd picked up a set of English made Ashley ILes wood carving tools (about $800.00) and Japanese water stones and had been producing a few practice pieces to re-acquaint myself with wood carving techniques in preparation for the construction of an elaborately carved coil support structure, something from another era. The snake design on the front and the legs were my own. The secondary/primary support design was courtesy of the ancient Celts. The carvings at the top of both front legs was inspired by The Grateful Dead and Owsley (is he still alive?). I spent 3 days at my drafting table to complete full scale drawings of each component and scale drawings of the assembly.
As a plus, this may be the first TC of this type built since Tesla and it has an adjustable extra coil support which rotates on the horizontal axis from an upright to an almost horizontal position, about 85 degrees of travel, see Photos 4 & 5. This allows a way to photograph the discharge head on. An idea inspired by one of Ken Strickfadden's coils, it was mounted horizontally and had round glass discs with, I believe, calcium tungstate (CaWO4) between them for a topload (I smell another project). It fluoresces, I'm going to build one. It still seems odd that there are obscure TC designs floating around and I'd appreciate hearing about any others. To see the two magnifier diagrams I found in issue 26, the Apr/May/June Issue of Electric Spacecraft (published Sept. 14, 1998), click on Magnifier Diagrams.
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5-24-04 Gap in the service position (5-22-04) Building rotary in 2003 June 27, 04 June 27, 04 hi res.
Above 6 photos, July 12, 2004.
The left side primary and driver are wound cw, the right side is wound ccw, both being mirror images of each other and having identical electrical characteristics. The enclosed rsg has a clear acrylic front panel (soon to be replaced with black acrylic) with the ozone and heat exhausted through a 20 foot vacuum hose leading outside. I used 15kV insulated wire for the primary and tank circuit connections. On photos 2 & 6, among others, you'll notice the primary connections diving into the deck through four slant-drilled holes.
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Photo 13 - proof of concept design with proto components. Photo 14 - 9-20-02. Photo 15 - 9-28-02. Photo 16 - Tesla's diagram with my working schematic drawn to its left. Photo 17 - to-scale drawing of this machine. It's seems that the machine in photo 16 shouldn't normally produce any discharge as Tesla wanted to radiate energy and that would help explain why I didn't observe any breakout until changing the primary series connections to a parallel arrangement.
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919kb Gif Animation of photo 19 break-down - from video of the event Photo 19 Video
Here's five photos of testing different resonators and top-loads. Photo 19 - 'magwire' that turned out to be 22awg copper wire painted black. Note the reflections off the white board and break-out patterns on the coil. Photos 21 & 22 - resonator set at about 60 degrees (30 degrees off perpendicular).
The Primary
Each primary coil has four, carefully notched, outside supports which leaves nothing but air between coils. With the supports inside of the turns, I found that as I decreased prim. sec. spacing, arcing between coils would initiate from them. This arcing disappeared by moving the supports outside of the coil. They're under a slight amount of outward tension and each are secured at their top and bottom turns to the lower primary support with zip ties.
One of the many challenging parts of this project was reaching a final design for the primary supports. They began as round discs - photo 13. Once I had proven that this was a viable TC, I turned my attention to improving the design and material of the structural components. In particular, I wasn't really thrilled with the round primary supports, of which there were three prototypes. The next two were Maltese crosses which never did look right and the final design was this Celtic cross which has the exact look I was searching for. That exercise took about six months.
While discussing the magnifier diagrams with Charles Yost, he suggested I build a CS. Since I had the components at hand and it sounded like an interesting idea, I built one. However, the toroid works best for field shaping and separation, a Bill Wysock innovation. I use a spherical topload primarily for aesthetic purposes.
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Photos 23 thru 27 - Proto Components
Photo 23 - lower sphere installed. The only reason for this was to provide a cool looking central terminal for those three leads and there seemed to be a need for another component to take up the space in order to provide some balance to the design, whether or not this helps or hinders the operation of the coil is still to be determined. Photo 24 - exploded view of the central support structure. Photo 25 - the central support installed. Photo 26 - adjustable acrylic resonator support installed and ready to accept a coil. Photo 27 - the proto assembly ready to wind.
Construction Photos
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Photo 29 shows the two front and one rear leg in various stages of completion. The middle leg in that photo was rejected and another one was carved, I only lost about two weeks of work! For some reason, I thought it would take maybe a few days or a week to finish each leg and was I ever in for a rude surprise. I spent 6 weeks of evenings and weekends to finish EACH leg. I still can't believe it but that's what it took (I kept a log of the time spent on each operation).
The deck is oak as I couldn't locate wide pieces of cherry and there's an ebony inlay down the center. The central support is made from oak plywood and cherry side supports with acrylic pieces between them. All of the other components are cherry. Each was individually finished with 5 coats of clear shellac for a good moisture barrier (each lightly sanded) then around 15 coats of gloss lacquer and then they were assembled. Large nylon bolts secure topside components to the deck. Photos 28 - 35 - base unit construction photos. Photo 36 - two CSI 0.01768uF caps. No metal was used in the construction.
