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My first tesla coil

On this page you get informations about the first, low
powered tesla coil I have built.
The technical specs
Circuit diagram
Construction details, plans and photos
Primary Capacitor
Primary Coil
Secondary Coil
Main sparkgap
Power control unit
Filter unit
Operating coil photos

The technical specs

The following information is about the technical
specifications of my coil
Power consumption 400VA
Transformer 8kV/50mA (Neon)
Primary windings 10, tapped at 8,25
Primary capacity 11,7 nF
Secondary diameter 75mm
Secondary windings 972, 0,39mm copper wire
Secondary winding height 380mm (5:1 ratio)
Resonance frequency about 350 kHz
Toroid diameter 28cm
Toroid inner diameter 9cm
RF Ground 70cm copper tubing

The coil is built using a 8kV/50mA neon sign transformer

(NST). The primary coil is a conical type coil, built with
8mm copper tubing. The primary capacitor is build as stack
of plates. I have built 2 capacitors, which are used in parallel
to obtain 11,7nF capacity. The dielectricum is 1mm,
consisting of 10 layers of 0,1mm PE foil. The capacitors are
set into PP boxes, sealed and filled with transformer oil. The
secondary coil is wound on a PVC tube with 0,39mm copper
wire. The toroid is made from aluminium flexible tubing
with 90mm diameter, which can easily be formed to a toroid.

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The main sparkgap is made in Richard Quick style. I used 7

pieces of copper tubing, which results in 6 gaps in series.
Each gap is about 0,7mm distance. Remark: I think, that the
small fan I use for quenching does not provide enough
airflow for that purpose. It is a small Sunon CPU cooling
fan. After having finished the design, I have doubts, that the
gap performs as good as it could. I will do a design with a
stronger airflow to check, if I can achieve a performance
improvement.

Circuit diagram

The coil circuit is fed by the power control unit. Tr1 is the
neon sign transformer, which delivers 2x4kV center tapped.
The elements C1a, C1b, L1a, L1b, R1a and R1b build the
filter unit. S1a and S1b are protection sparkgaps for the
transformer. The main tank circuit consists of Cm, L2 and
spargap S2. Sparkgap S3 is a protection sparkgap for the
main capacitor. L3 is the secondary coil connected to RF
ground and with the toroid on top.

Construction details, plans and photos

This chapter shows information and pictures from the
construction of my tesla coil. It is sorted by the different
components. The pictures are not supplied in a larger format.
This is only available for the photos of the operating coil.
Primary Capacitor
Primary Coil
Secondary Coil
Main sparkgap
Power control unit
Filter unit

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Primary Capacitor
My primary capacitor consists of actually 2 plate stack type
capacitors used in parallel.
Capacitor components
On the right, you see the PP
box in which the stack is built
in. Left to the box, you see
the PE sheets and the
aluminium plates.
Building the stack
The layers of the capacitor
unit are setup with aluminium
and PE sheets. To have all
layers in exact position I have
constructed a base, where
the layers can be assembled.
Mounted stack
The mounted capacitor unit
before mounting contacts and
plexiglass top and putting into
the PP box and sealing and
filling with oil. The plates are
pressed using 5mm Pertinax
with 4 screws at the edges.
This material is very hard and
well suited for this purpose.
Plexiglass cover
The cover for the capacitors,
holding the contacts. The
cover is made from
plexiglass.

Mounting the cover

Mounting the cover onto the
stack. Contacting is done via
the aluminium moulding by
replacing 2 washers. You can
see the 2 gaps where the
moulding will be placed in.
The screws from both sides
hold the other washers in
place.
Complete unit
One mounted capacitor unit in
the PP box before sealing
and filling with oil.

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Finished capacitors
Both capacitors finished. The
yellow color in the boxes is
the transformer oil.

I ran my first full power test on April, 21th. When opening

the sparkgap to the last (6th) gap I found, that one of my
capacitors had problems. Sometimes there was a short flash
in the unit and the oil showed some bubbles. But the unit still
remained operable. I still could use the capacitor, but I will
build new ones. I don't think, that there is a real breakdown
of dielectricum, but the 10mm overhead of PE seems to be
too low. I will build a new capacitor.

Primary Coil
The primary coil assembly is made of chipboard. There are
10 turns of 8mm copper tubing mounted in a conical form
with an angle of 20 degrees.
The primary coil assembly
made from chipboard. The
base plate is 50x50cm sqare
and there are 6 supports for
the copper tubing.

The primary coil assembly,

now black painted and with
isolators of silicon sheet (red).
This type of design was not
good. See the description of
problems in the construction
page.

The primary coil, completely

mounted. You see the
aluminium moulding on top of
each of the 6 supports, which

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were needed because the

copper tubing had too much
pressure and destroyed the
wood. Note, that there is not
yet a strike protection ring.

Problems with the primary coil assembly.

During my tests I encountered problems with my primary
coil due to insufficient isolation. Although I isolated the
contact points of the copper tubing with silicon sheets and
silicon glue, there occured sometimes arcing. The weak point
in the design is, that I use many screws between the windings
to fix the tubing. The distance between the windings turned
out to be too small.

Secondary coil
The secondary coil is wound on a PVC tube (walls about
1mm thin) with 75mm diameter. I used 0,39mm copper wire
and wound 972 windings.
The PVC tube for the
secondary coil. The PVC tube
is for use in gutters. The ends
are closed with disks of white
PVC. On the lower right end,
you see the screw coming out
of the tube.
The top of the secondary coil.
The white plastic cylinder is
mounted on the screw, and
the top carries a flat copper
plate, to which the upper end
of the wire is soldered. This is
the toroid contact point.

The bottom of the secondary

coil, with the contact to the
RF-ground.

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Main sparkgap
The main sparkgap is built with a PVC tube in which
segments of copper tubing are mounted. This is the type of
gap described by Richard Quick.
This picture shows the
components needed to build
the main sparkgap. I use 7
pieces of copper tubing,
mounted in a PVC tube. This
is the type of sparkgap
described by Richard Quick.
A fan is mounted at the end to
provide cooling and
quenching.
The main sparkgap mounted
on the circuit board. In the
front you can see the small
fan (maybe too small for good
quenching).

Power control unit

The power control unit is build as a separate box, used to
control the voltage applied to the coil. It contains a variac for
this purpose. Two instruments are used to display voltage
and current. A safety key is used to prevent unauthorized
use. Powering on the variac always resulted in a too large
peak of current. So I provided an NTC to limit the current
while switching on the unit. This has one disadvantage: you
must wait before turning on the unit again after switching off
to allow the NTC to cool down, otherwise the currents will
again be too high.
This picture shows the power
control unit front plate. On the
left, the variac, on the right
instruments as well as
switches.

This picture shows the

opened power control unit
seen from the back side. On
the right, you see the blue

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variac transformer, on the left

the instruments and the
switch relay. On the bottom,
the input and output plugs are
mounted.

Filter unit
The filter unit is needed to prevent high voltage of high
frequency to strike back to the power supply. As you can see
in the circuit diagram above, the filter consists of 2
capacitors, 2 resistors, 2 chokes and 2 sparkgaps.

Filter unit assembly

The filter unit is assembled on a PVC plate.

This picture shows the filter
unit plate. The capacitor is not
mounted yet. You can see the
inductivities and the resistors,
and in the back, there is the
sparkgap, made of plexiglass
and screws.

Filter unit capacitor

The parts needed to build the
filter unit capacitor. The stack
is pressed with pertinax plates
like the main capacitors, too.
On the left, you see the
aluminium sheets.
This picture shows the
capacitor for the filter unit
before mounting in the case
and filling with oil. The
contacts are fixed on a
plexiglass top plate. The
original case was build from
plexiglass, but I had problems
with that after some time. See
construction page. So I built a
new box of PP, photo below.
This picture shows the
capacitor for the filter unit
mounted in a self made
polypropylen case filled with
transformer oil. See

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construction page.

This picture shows the

capacitor for the filter unit
mounted in the original
plexiglass case, which
resulted in problems. See
construction page.

Operating coil photos

This part shows pictures of the coil in operation, taken
during first test phase on 21.04.2000. The photos have been
taken with an aperture setting of 2.8. Exposure time was
variable for several seconds by hand. Film material ASA200.
Please click on the small photo to view a larger version.

1 Wait for darkness 2 First shot 3 Another shot

4 5 6

7 Free arcs 1 8 Free arcs 2 9

last modified on 07/31/2001
10:43:47 © 1999 by Herbert Mehlhose

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