Musical jacobs ladder mark 2

[boylesg]

Had to solve a little problem of HV leaking into the circuitry via the ferrite core (or more likely the metal clip that holds the two halves together) and my DIY primary winding. I was getting zapped touching the mosfet, the audio input plug and my power switch.

Apparently silcone sealant is not a good enough insulator against HV and I was getting internal arcing through the silcone and air pockets to the metal clip. I guess from there the insulation on the magent wire has no hope of stopping it.

In the end I slipped an irrigation riser tube over the solder joint on the tv flyback transformer and filled it with araldite and pooled araldite around the base of the riser tube. That seemed to stop the HV dead.

But anyway I have discovered that the duty cycle of the oscillator has an effect on the music volume coming through the HV arc. Suppose it stands to reason - with little 'room to move' the audio modulation has trouble transfering signficant power to the HV arc.

Any way here it is. The audio is now clearly audible above the crackling now: **broken link removed**

What about stereo plasma balls?

 

[BradtheRad]

Good work. You made headway against the hurdles.

The music can be heard very clearly now.

It's fascinating to see how the arc responds to the music going through it.
Sometimes it jumps upward a few inches when the bass drum pounds.

Or the arc might stand still for a moment when the music is quiet.

 

[boylesg]

Good work. You made headway against the hurdles.

The music can be heard very clearly now.

It's fascinating to see how the arc responds to the music going through it.
Sometimes it jumps upward a few inches when the bass drum pounds.

Or the arc might stand still for a moment when the music is quiet.

I am eagre to build a small tesla coil and see if my driver can drive this in place of the flyback transformer.

I have actually built a twin driver circuit so that I can create a pair of stereo tesl coils. So all the power related stuff (voltage reg, pre-reg, protection diode) are on one circuit board, the 555 and TC4422 related stuff are on another circuit board and then I can use my existing stereo class A amplfier to feed the two audio channels into my twin multivibrator circuits.

I haven't done the RCD snubber part of it yet since I don't know what the inductance of the tesla coil will be.