Tesla coil evolution and fails.

A compilation of the history of my tesla coil from its initial construction in 2015 all the way to its final form in 2019. It went through several circuit designs (Mostly due to my ignorance) before landing on a DC resonant design.

[@allmarphil]

The ending is majestic 👌

[@Jonodrew1286]

Excellent progress and fantastic final tuning its very happy

[@RAVI171175]

That was just amazing & superb ending. Those spark gap Tesla coils are great to DIY. But the problem with them is that they waste way too much of energy in that spark gap by generating excessive amount of heat. They are great to start with as beginners. Modern DRSSTC are best to carry forward. Anyways, very nice video. Keep it up.

[@lewisse5]

Thanks. I also have a larger DRSSTC that I finished last summer.

[@DolezalPetr]

love it

[@trenthighvoltage]

How'd you get the angle grinder to like match the frequency? or is it just very fast enough?

[@lewisse5]

The angle grinder doesn't create the resonant frequency (around 220KHz) Its job is to let the tank charge and then short out the power supply, causing it to ring with the primary coil. This happens a couple hundred times a second and is the frequency you can hear.

[@trenthighvoltage]

@@lewisse5 I meant to match 60hz from the mains. I know how a tesla coil and a resonance circuit like that works, but not the angle grinder basically matching the 60hz pulses

[@lewisse5]

Its not synched to mains. It uses a DC power supply instead of an AC one. This site has a lot more info on the design Im using: www.richieburnett.co.uk/dcreschg.html

[@trenthighvoltage]

@@lewisse5 even if it's DC, it can still be pulsed from 60Hz AC input. unless you're using smoothing DC capacitors.

[@lewisse5]

There is a DC bus capacitor made up of 8 MOCs. An HV inductor made from MOTs prevents it from instantly discharging into the spark gap. The inductance was too small during the first tries and you can see the electrodes melting at 1:43

[@BackMacSci]

What does DC resonant mean?

[@lewisse5]

It uses a DC power supply combined with an LC circuit to boost the voltage instead of a traditional AC power supply. You can find more about the subject here: www.richieburnett.co.uk/dcreschg.html

[@BackMacSci]

@@lewisse5 thank you!

[@sikewiley]

Im looking into this as well. And thank you for your sgtc videos. They're the main reason I was able to understand and build mine. Im using 4 mots in series and your 3 mot still has better output so I still have some tuning to go lol.

[@nkronert]

0:52 how do you power the angle grinder without risking sending huge voltage spikes into the power grid in case of failure?

[@lewisse5]

Its just powered of a variac, so there wasn't really any protection. Now I use an isolation transformer.

[@strawman9410]

I want one