Building Spark Gap Tesla Coil pt. 3 - MMC Capacitor

[@lakiza55]

I can't imagine the time it took you to build that bank, let alone 2 of them. Genuinely a work of art, it's mesmerizing to look at, the solder job, the symmetry, i'm speechless

[@DiodeGoneWild]

Actually I still have to build the 2nd part :). I have just one now. The soldering is horrible. The previous one I was building many many years ago looked better danyk.cz/mmc.html Probably because I used a thinner wire which was easier to bend into nice regular waves. This one uses a thicker wire which is harder to work with, but it brings lower resistance.

[@TerryMcKean]

@@DiodeGoneWild Wow!... that danyk.cz site is a treasure-chest of all kinds of goodies and gagetry etc etc etc. Thanks for sharing that link. Also, that's definitely a beautifully-constructed capacitor bank you built back then. I just got here and saw that link and checked it out... now on to your video on this page...... :-)

[@TerryMcKean]

Your new cap-bank is definitely beautiful, too. Thanks for sharing.

[@picanazo420]

@@DiodeGoneWild but the Tesla coil is high frecuency, not will be better to use varius finers wires for the MMC? Or is better to use one thicker wire wire?

[@ats89117]

@@DiodeGoneWild For a high frequency pulse capacitor, the inductance is going to be much more important than the resistance. Increasing the diameter of the wire reduces its inductance but not by much, so using very thick wire beyond what is needed to prevent the wire from overheating probably won't have noticeable results. A braided wire (maybe solder wick) could be used to further reduce the inductance.

[@pvc988]

СССР resistors and Tesla capacitors. That's going to be a proper Tesla coil.

[@erikziak1249]

It is not the brand or manufacturer. It is the design. Have headroom. Always. And most imporatnt of all: fully understand what you are doing. Every step. Also be aware what would happen if some part would fail. Do this mental process for every single part before you start to build anything. And know what to expect. Safety first. You must understand each process in anything that you do in order to do it safely and efficiently.

[@maticz3923]

CCCP - > SSSR -> USSR

[@puckcat22679]

Erik Žiak I'm pretty sure he was commenting on nationalities and alliances during the Eastern Bloc period. He's using capacitors made by Tesla (self explanatory when using them in a Tesla coil) and resistors made in the USSR. The Tesla company that made the capacitors was, at the time the capacitors were made, in Czechoslovakia, which was an Eastern Bloc country, associated with the USSR. I doubt it has anything to do with whatever quality is expected from those items, and at any rate, it's my understanding that these components are likely to be proper tanks- somewhat primitive technology for the era in which they were made, but ridiculously durable.

[@erikziak1249]

I was born and rised in Czechoslovakia. The components were not high quality. Most of them were just good enough or medicore at best, as there was no competition to drive innovation. In socialism, quality is not the main concern, quantity is. Build masses of things, so the unit cost goes down. Which it did. But at the expense of quality and mostly innovation. While the "eastern" economies maintained worldwide qulity in the 1960s, they started to fall behind in the 1970s and in the 1980s it was clear to anyone that this system will eventually collapse. Many products became obsolete as there was no innovation. For example In Czechoslovakia, one particular diode (was manufactured over 30 years wihtout modifications. Look at east Germany. The Trabant 601 was built over a quarter of a century with literally no difference between one made in 1964 and one made in 1989. No wonder the economy of the "eastern bloc" collapsed. With outdated products, inefficient manufactoring, zero innovation.... It was flawed in its roots.

[@danernorbi]

Yes its going to proper tesla coil

[@amiralozse1781]

3:54 CatCapacitor walks into frame and sits down edit: also 8:41 12:05 13:40 17:20 Love your very well done explanations and especially your CatCapacitor

[@MrMacroVision]

your cat seems to to block all this talk about tesla, is your cat named edison?

[@jkvdv4447]

the resistors also balances the voltage on each capacitor to avoid overvoltage on individual capacitors.

[@Miata822]

What a fantastic wealth of information. While I'm unlikely to ever build a Tesla coil there is so much good theoretical information here. Saving to my archives.

[@Locksley3D]

I love that you spend the time explaining every little bit and detail. There are very few good guides to tesla coils and I am happy that you will put in the time and effort to make such a quality series of videos for us tesla coilers our there. Thank you good sir

[@mrnotsoevil]

"Hey, you are sitting on my high voltage" lol

[@KoloczBezPosypki]

so basicly this is the best channel on youtube period

[@RODALCO2007]

Excellent job. That was a lot of work to put that all together. Thanks for showing.

[@kemalkurt5257]

So much handy work for one video and you have lots of information about electronics thank for your effort. Keep making this type of videos it is better than most of the classes on university.

[@alphonsesynrem28]

Such beautiful hard work. This kind of working takes whole day for many days. Needs lots of energy patience and interest. Very impressed.

[@pranavramesh4888]

Could you tell where you got the capacitors from and where i can get it? I cant find any capacitor rated for such voltages and frequency for a reasonable price

[@TerryMcKean]

When I was in high-school back in the early '70s someone in electronics class set up a nice home-made tesla-coil, using a 15,000 volt neon sign transformer and a simple spark-gap assembly with about an inch or two of spacing in the gap, and the big coil's fine-gauge secondary winding was wrapped the length of a 6 foot tall/6 inch diameter plastic pipe and a few turns of heavy-gauge wire at the bottom of the secondary winding for the primary, and the capacitor consisted of the safety-glass from an old 21" TV with both sides covered with aluminum foil, leaving about an inch or so of space around the edges of the safety-glass plate so it wouldn't arc across the edges of the plate. When that thing was fired up the sparks would jump across the gap sounding like .22 gauge bullets being shot at 60 rounds a second and the foil on either side of the glass-plate capacitor would clamp tight against the glass and buzzed at 60 Hz, and the very-high-voltage arcing and sparking crackled all around the little metal sphere that was at the top of the secondary. Tesla coils are DEFINITELY awesome! :-)

[@CG-vd4rh]

clean the carbon based ink, from the pipe. i made that mistake, and my secondary burned up.

[@DiodeGoneWild]

I already started winding my secondary and I of course removed the ink :). I will definitely mention it in the video. Thanks for recommendation ;).

[@AmitabhAnkur]

Your video cleared my doubt regarding addition of capacitors.

[@nightrous3026]

What a beautiful capacitor bank. Its impressive, you made its profile as small as physically possible.

[@SauvikRoy]

12:20 Love the capacitor wiring! Got it, symmetry is the key! It's all in engineering!☺️

[@Conservator.]

23:47 This looks beautiful but you have used shorter leads by not connecting the capacitors diagonally but from one pole to the nearest pole of the capacitor next to it. Half of the parallel connections would have been short too but the other halves would have been long. The latter are less important because they are just for discharging. Did you consider different topologies? (I’m sure you did) and what were your considerations? I must say that I quite like the design you chose from an aesthetic point of view. Very exiting project!

[@johncoops6897]

I would have wired the caps at 90 degrees, rather than in waves. In other words, I'd use straight lines of wire joining all the caps in each column. 4 grids, each 7 rows x 8 columns, rather than 4 grids, each 14 rows x 4 columns So, instead of 2 banks x 14 rows (28S) x 2 layers x 4 columns (8P) = each layer 14 x 4 I would make it 2 banks x 2 layers x 7 rows (28S) x 8 columns (8P) = each layer 7 x 8 In that way, all the caps would be "orientated the same way". The resistors would go at one end of each column. Interconnecting wires would be heaps shorter, and it would be *infinitely* easier to understand LOL

[@itsevilbert]

Love the video, as always - Thank you sharing your knowledge. I was thinking why not two discharge resistors, one on each side for redundancy in that safety measure (and double the discharge rate). But then I thought that since the resistors are not strictly necessary for function they are there to stop you from being killed, and given enough time the circuit will eventually self discharge. As long as you treat every capacitor as being fully charged, even if you are absolutely positive that it is discharged (unless you have disconnected and discharged), everything is good. And I think that the odds are, that a capacitor will fail long before the resistors will fail, although at high voltages I'm not certain - I've always had a sensible level of fear of high voltage circuits, well anything higher than mains voltage.

[@lifenotagame6718]

Hello. How to calculate how many capacitance farads do I need? And what about voltage: how many and AC or better DC? I'm building double resonant solid state tesla coil

[@arash2paris]

every night I listen to your voice while Im in bed. it help me to sleep quick and nice. i like your accent

[@zx8401ztv]

I know you are the mad professor now, Even the cat would run away from sticky tape and cardboard :-D. Love the russian resistors, heavy duty for a 1/4 watt lol.

[@DiodeGoneWild]

They are actually 2W resistors.

[@educatedmanholecoverbyrich8890]

They are 1m at 2W, not 1/4W

[@blaharadek666]

Joooo Danyk je prostě world wide a to zaslouženě ! Máš to pěkný, vždy sem ty tvoje konstrukce obdivoval už od mala :)

[@gabest4]

What's the capacitance of your cat? I have one that sparks like crazy after just a few stroking. I'm thinking of mounting a discrarge resistor on her somewhere.

[@amiralozse1781]

be careful with the soldering joints! it might result in thermal damage of your very heat sensitive CatCapacitor (CC) which in turn might result in mechanical damage of yourself (punctured and even ripped outer membrane including leakage of precious red electrolyte). of course you want to avoid damaging your CC at all cost as everyone of them is absolutely unique and priceless! all other methods arent very advisable either. like wrapping in Al-foil, wetting the outer shell of your CC etc.

[@survivalboy9597]

awesome Videos pls never stop making them

[@AmitabhAnkur]

Your videos are very very useful.

[@fluffyblue4006]

Nice build. Very nice build. Excellent attention for the details and the theory. In the MOT - capacitor - TeslaPrimary series circuit, the windings will do the bulk of the capacitor discharging, after powering down this thing. Anyway, good to integrate extra safety discharge resistors in the capacitor banks themselves.

[@erhardbock1228]

ich liebe es wie der Mann erzählt.

[@jjhack3r]

This guy is so genuine

[@SuperKillerkarnickel]

copier proof overhead transparancy -if you are able to still get it - withstands 20kV AC. In the lab we didn't have enough voltage to create an arc-through. I made a layered capacitor with this material together with aluminium foil that gives a big bang. such a device is of course completely deadly.

[@vygandaspudzmys1086]

Can't wait final form. I feel like in first Star Wars movies.

[@haroonsyedmohammed8430]

You have so much knowledge, really awesome.

[@hyperion8008]

This is such a brilliant series. Thank you so much.

[@MakarovFox]

you can submerge that in resin and have a super one block capacitor

[@tonyvtech25]

CAN'T WAIT TO SEE IT WORKING AFTER SO MANY CALCULATIONS.

[@tatemcaluney7269]

Hello! Thank you for the very helpful video. I am trying to design my own tesla coil right now but I'm having trouble understanding why you were "shooting for 50nF" in your MMC... Do you mind clarifying how you decided to choose that capacitance given your circuit?

[@lisadolatowski]

I love it when your cat comes into the video. such a pretty cat too. 🐱🐾😍

[@williama29]

you cat loves to be your helper and or your cat says diode gone wild should not play with spark gaps ever also I have learned how capacitors work I accidentally blew at least two capacitors in my life as a kid

[@gabrielhacecosas]

I recommend you the rotating spark gap, it works much better there is no comparison. I have found that the angle grinder cutting discs are quite insulating and withstand a lot of heat, this is what I have used and I have put it directly on a angle grinder with a speed regulator to adjust it.

[@gabrielhacecosas]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/gWepqWOAo9-XopI

[@pruebatest4379]

Tienes a un buen ayudante...el gato!. Jejeje....todo muy intuitivo e interesante. Un saludo desde España.

[@ridefast0]

Maybe it is best to feed the cat before designing a TC, my cats demand it. Great work on the capacitor design and specs, and I would respectfully offer another way to think about resonance of the charging circuit. A wider primary (static) spark gap is often seen as an easy way to increase the power throughput and the size of secondary sparks. Running 'close to resonant' charging could be a great way to increase the charging voltage from, say, a 2-MOT balanced AC supply - the 6kV peak output is a bit lower than ideal, but it could be increased by resonance to 8-10kV peak at the capacitor and spark gap. This will likely reduce the BPS of the system but it might be OK. It's like tweaking a Tiger's tail - resonance doesn't automatically lead to destruction, but it does need careful calculation and simulation! Also, I am a great fan of what you called the split-capacitor method; Mr Tesla himself called it 'equi-drive' and of course he too saw all the benefits of a fully balanced circuit in reducing the undesired common-mode currents from the parasitic components.

[@zilog357]

It's a simple calculation as long as the caps are the same. Otherwise, you would need to use 1/((1/c1)+(1/c2)+etc...) Also, the bleeding resistors, besides bleeding the caps for safety, the more important function is as you said, to balance the charges, because using many caps in series may cause that any of the caps get way more voltage than the others, making it fail. So the resistors (tens of megohms in this case) make a voltage division network keeping the voltage equal on each cap. As always from you, nice video!

[@electronic7979]

Excellent video

[@chvasdek]

Hello. Great video as always. My daughter asks what is the name of the cat?

[@DiodeGoneWild]

We call her Veritáska :).

[@erikziak1249]

HAHA, V3S... I wonder how she came to that name... Is her purring like the sound of the legendary V3S?

[@ronniepirtlejr2606]

I see some serious lightning bolts coming!👍👍👍😆

[@janno288]

Doesn't the DC resistance of the primary coil and the transformer secondary apready discharge the capacior nearly instantly?

[@solarsynapse]

At 21:00 would each side capacitor be rated at the full voltage with half the total capacitance or the other way around?

[@geoffreykeane4072]

Great series!

[@TinwhistleD]

A wealth of information on a spark Gap Tesla. Superb! Would it be possible to use 130mm Polycarbonate pipe of 5mm thickness of which I have a 3 metre long piece? Thanks for putting this on KZbin.

[@GodLike-pe6kj]

One more thing about connectiong capacitors in series: you have to take the tolerance into consideration, so that means you should build it to withstand more voltage than it actually will see. This is also improved when you put the individual capacitors in paralell, not only the rows.

[@angelodef8801]

You could have fans blowing on the caps for prolonged use Cheers from italy

[@lacimollalaw3463]

Ciaooo

[@angelodef8801]

@@lacimollalaw3463 ciao

[@SAHILKHAN-lu8oq]

What? Fan blowing capacitors? Really? I know high voltage blows up capacitors.....

[@АлександрГольдварг]

I sometimes can't find these MLTs here in Russia, but you have several boxes of them... How?

[@TechTed1]

That capacitor is like a capacitive drop on those led light bulbs the resonance is created by spark gap and this capacitor is just a protection for the primary coil to do not get directly high voltage from the secondary of the transformer and to burn both the coil and transformer you can put a high power resistor in series in place of that capacitor that capacitor and that coil is just like a voltage devider

[@gkcnalaka]

Nice project .. Love from sri lanka ❤සයුරි❤

[@Gorlung]

do you have electricity in sri lanka?

[@gkcnalaka]

Yes off course .

[@psycronizer]

did you bother to check the polarity of your caps ? even though they are not electrolytic, it might be interesting to see if it created a smoother quieter device....

[@bashaaksema94]

That looks sooooo awesome I know what my next project is going to be

[@ЭллаПолянская-р6в]

Резисторы МЛТ-2 (СССР) нашли свое применение. Спасибо.

[@krasnobaev]

Может быть вы ещё расскажите что это за удивительный акцээээээээээнт?

[@Mr_Flybacker]

@@krasnobaev из Чехии он судя по всему.

[@Stanislav.Cerovsky]

Ist there any reason for not to use printed board for MMC capacitors?

[@cezarcatalin1406]

How about we take a big air capacitor and fill it with transformer oil ?

[@TinwhistleD]

May I use your design to try and make a Spark Gap Tesla? And would it be possible to use a Center Tapped neon sign transformer (4KV per coil / 8KV total)? Thanks

[@nightrous3026]

Im going to be using a bunch of film capacitors. I think around 20. I planned to make them into a grid lile you said, but i might also incorporate other factors from your bank.

[@thomasw6169]

Nice fur. Nice calculator.

[@gabrielhacecosas]

I have tried making my coil with leyden bottles and then with a homemade aluminum foil and plastic capacitor dipped in oil and they worked fine but when I have made one with hundreds of commercial capacitors it shows that it is more efficient.

[@andrasnagy6923]

12:14 fun fact: capacitor is kondenzátor in hungarian too

[@e1woqf]

In German it's "Kondensator".

[@mythicalboy3600]

In albania is "kondenzator"

[@minzatcatalin6196]

in romanian is condensator

[@FatalBombCRV]

In Polish we say "kondensator". For a curiosity, I looked up the translations in other languages - the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages use exactly the same stem. Of course, not counting the Icelandic language which never fails with its lexical purism ("capacitor" in Icelandic is "þétti"). Even the Japanese word is "kondensa" (コンデンサ), same in Korean - "kondenseo" (콘덴서). It seems that English is just one odd out, however the capacitors used to be called "condensers" back in the 40s and earlier.

[@AKAtheA]

@@FatalBombCRV technically speaking at least in CZ, the word "kondenzátor" is incorrect, as nothing condenses in it and its feature is capacitance ("kapacita"), so the technically correct term is "kapacitor"...but almost nobody uses this word :D

[@solarsynapse]

Can someone please give more information concerning current. Everyone gives information and calculations about capacitor voltage, but not current.

[@jahangirklw1165]

How much power is required for 6cm diameter and 30cm coil please answer how many watts power supply

[@DiodeGoneWild]

I'd guess about 50 - 200W would be enough. But of course there's no direct corelation between power and size of a Tesla coil.

[@jahangirklw1165]

@@DiodeGoneWild thank you very much I really appreciate it

[@theradiodragon2awo]

Hi , can you make a test of storage media (SD card for example) ins sight of running tesla coil like Brainiac75 did with magnets ?

[@jmoney5097]

Very good Video, helped me a lot

[@Electronichub_05]

Can I use 2kv 10nf ceramic capacitors?

[@nightrous3026]

Instead of using MOT's why not try a flyback with a ZVS driver? It works great for me, and in fact, you can change your primary windings to get any voltage you want.

[@abdraoufx]

my OCD is happy beautiful work

[@coloradowilderness3139]

Diode, Would you work more on ATX PSU reparing ? Thanks Ahead.

[@RandoniumTJ]

Hats off to the bank design ...

[@Dj-Magik86]

Do You can use microwave capacitor ?

[@KOSURYA]

Please continue to make it 👍😁

[@postualin6551]

Why You dont make a inclousure for IT ?

[@roceloi]

I have a question¿Where you get this URSS electronic suplies? ¿What do you has study? When I see you videos i suffer for you!! Stay safe.

[@bulwinkle]

You director seems to think that building this device may have catastrophic consequences.

[@1pcfred]

I'm starting to get worried that part 7 of this series is going to be the fire department putting this guy's house out.

[@tetraederzufrequenztesla2342]

Nice work. Супер работа

[@jimkimbrell4878]

I love it, my cat does the exact same thing. Like,”hey give me attention too”, “here’s my butt”!

[@lehelbuna7095]

Where can i find these capacitors?

[@RicardoPenders]

I made a power supply which produces 100KV continuously very easy, it consumes 13 A at 47 VDC on the input which is 611 Watt... I'm driving the flyback transformer primary with my ZVS driver that I've built myself, basically it's a Mazilly circuit only I have paralleled all components one time for handling the power better and I also have a separate variable linear regulated power supply for the ZVS driver circuit which is separated with two 24 VAC switching relais that I use to disconnect the high power transformer on the AC side and on the DC side, both are switched at the same time with a foot switch because I don't want to be near any part of the circuit when it is live it's just too dangerous, it will kill a man faster than he would fell to the ground... However I love to play with it and see what happens when I put such a high voltage to stuff and blow things up, lol. Do you think I could use my power supply for a tesla coil too? I have tested it using multiple layden jars in parallel on the output which is very scary to say the least but it does work, I'm just not sure if my voltage would be too high to drive the primary of a tesla coil. Best regards, Ricardo Penders

[@fungusenthusiast8249]

I think 100kV is too high, look for microwave oven transformers and string them in series. Styropyro has a good video titled overclocked plasma globes.

[@mihaichirila9127]

Finnaly along first ones!

[@justin8894]

Maybe the cat likes the warm lights.

[@satyanarayan5602]

Sir please tell me that can I use microwave oven high voltage capacitor. Because I am not able to get that capacitor.

[@DiodeGoneWild]

You can't.

[@satyanarayan5602]

Thanks sir but if we use your capacitor then we have to send a lot of money. Then we can make this tesla coil.

[@satyanarayan5602]

@@mernok2001 thanks sir

[@satyanarayan5602]

@@DiodeGoneWild Thanks sir but if we use your capacitor then we have to send a lot of money. Then we can make this tesla coil.

[@jstro-hobbytech]

This is amazing

[@dutt_arka]

This is wonderful!

[@melplishka5978]

Nice job.

[@karlmuller2121]

i love that cat

[@sadface7457]

Could you build a marx generator next.

[@marekmaslak8040]

11:25 Pekná kalkulačka.

[@andrewsmith3081]

"Hey! You are sitting on my high voltage."

[@supercritical5582]

why not use the caps from the microwave ?

[@Astri.electronics]

Where do you buy so many capacitors? I would also need to buy a whole lot of them for my MMC for 2 meter DRSSTC. I also live in Czech Republic

[@AKAtheA]

Holice...

[@Astri.electronics]

@@AKAtheA Tam jezdím pravidelně už několit let, ale ještě jsem tam neviděl takovouhle zásobu, asi to předemnou danyk vykoupil :D

[@TechTed1]

And at minute 6:46 when you add 2 parallel groups of capacitor that are i series that voltage is not 4kv anymore but is dividet by 2 and 4 by 2 = 2kilovolts and also those resistors you added it lowered the voltage even more so make some new calculations 😊 thank me later

[@DavidMG99]

Thanks for the info!

[@RespawnRestricted]

I really should in est in one of the ksger t12 irons

[@matid8453]

I'm watching your project on your website you are awesome I can't believe you made a lot o of tesla coils, hv generator, tv