Zak28
Advanced Member level 2
I recently made a tesla coil however its output corona ~20mm wire to wire with no toroid or spheroid of any kind, the corona is quite small given the secondary coil size. The ~20mm was made when the coil was laying on granite countertop so as to not conduct into other objects and the end wires were not arcing into the coil windings.
Capacitors are Dawn-cap DTH rated to 30kv 35nF each but they dropped to 21nF and the other to about 24nF since I overvolted them with a DC high voltage module but they are self healing with very low ESR so the capacitors are not likely to be the issue since the spark gap is under 2mm which means the caps are charged to less than 8kv which is very tolerable of the two series 30kv rated capacitors even if they are damaged.
The secondary is not grounded.
Specs were taken with an LCR meter
Primary is
14uF, 21uH 1mm Wire 228mm Length
Secondary **broken link removed**
540nF, 31mH, 215R, 32AWG, 520mm length
the ignition coil and spark arrangement, used hot rubber glue
I tried varing the primary coil into a single flat winding with lots of space and also the coil driver frequency but it didn't help. The layout will not be changed, I prefer the tesla coil with 2 series capacitors rather than the more common layout with only 1 capacitor. The ignition coil driver is fine since it can make 3-4 inches of corona without being connected to the tesla coil. Maybe the capacitors are infact the issue but its doesn't seem to be the case.
Capacitors are Dawn-cap DTH rated to 30kv 35nF each but they dropped to 21nF and the other to about 24nF since I overvolted them with a DC high voltage module but they are self healing with very low ESR so the capacitors are not likely to be the issue since the spark gap is under 2mm which means the caps are charged to less than 8kv which is very tolerable of the two series 30kv rated capacitors even if they are damaged.
The secondary is not grounded.
Specs were taken with an LCR meter
Primary is
14uF, 21uH 1mm Wire 228mm Length
Secondary **broken link removed**
540nF, 31mH, 215R, 32AWG, 520mm length
the ignition coil and spark arrangement, used hot rubber glue
I tried varing the primary coil into a single flat winding with lots of space and also the coil driver frequency but it didn't help. The layout will not be changed, I prefer the tesla coil with 2 series capacitors rather than the more common layout with only 1 capacitor. The ignition coil driver is fine since it can make 3-4 inches of corona without being connected to the tesla coil. Maybe the capacitors are infact the issue but its doesn't seem to be the case.
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