My sstc 1 build log

[CCX191]

Nice PCB design! I was just wondering how to get the audio modulator to run off a optical fibre cable. Are there any relevant links or help that you can give?

[oneKone]

Nice PCB design! I was just wondering how to get the audio modulator to run off a optical fibre cable. Are there any relevant links or help that you can give?

Cheers,
I used the download page on the oneTesla site. They provide the Arduino code and schematics (for free) they even seem to stock the fibre receiver/transmitter cheaper than other places (for me anyways)

[oneKone]

Finished the Tesla coil this weekend, some minor tweaks are still needed but as it sits it runs fine. This build log wasn't very detailed (or not as much as I'd hoped) so hopefully my next build goes into further detail.

[CCX191]

That's really amazing! Seems like your toroid is made of alu tape? Always had struggles getting the tape to stick. But damn it was nice. Looking forward for your next build !

[oneKone]

That's really amazing! Seems like your toroid is made of alu tape? Always had struggles getting the tape to stick. But damn it was nice. Looking forward for your next build !

Cheers,
Yeah toroid is just a styrofoam ring with 25mm width aluminium tape, it stuck really well. There's an eBay seller that has a listing for a pack of spun toroids so I think my future coils will be based off the sizes of the toroid.

the next coil I think will be a fullbridge and maybe 160mm diameter and around 450mm in length.

[Mads Barnkob]

Good performance for a half-bridge, it struggles a bit to produce too many tones at once, it is much neater if you use single tone at a time music or MIDI edited to play only a single channel with the melody and backed by a small speaker.

I also used the styrofoam toroids that can be found in hobby shops, with aluminium tape on, it was for my small DRSSTC2.

The smaller spun toroids are really affordable, so it is almost a shame not to buy them

Did you use regular 2- or 3-wire lamp cable for the primary coil? If so did you just parallel the wires inside the cable? I have not seen that used before.

[oneKone]

Good performance for a half-bridge, it struggles a bit to produce too many tones at once, it is much neater if you use single tone at a time music or MIDI edited to play only a single channel with the melody and backed by a small speaker.

I also used the styrofoam toroids that can be found in hobby shops, with aluminium tape on, it was for my small DRSSTC2.

The smaller spun toroids are really affordable, so it is almost a shame not to buy them

Did you use regular 2- or 3-wire lamp cable for the primary coil? If so did you just parallel the wires inside the cable? I have not seen that used before.

I think the problem with the midi was that I was messing around with the code from oneTesla and basically didn't know what I was doing.......

With the primary I bought a cheap extension lead for the wire, and you are correct with all 3 wires being in parallel. For whatever reason this seemed to give me the best output, it also has 3mm tube to give a constant gap between each winding.

[oneKone]

Also forgot to add a picture! I also have a video on Instagram which can be found with a #highvoltageforum tag. Or should I change it to #highvoltageforum.net ?

[CCX191]

Sweet! I see that you have a CNC router. What sort of CNC is it? planning to get a small one to play around. Or maybe a laser cutter

[oneKone]

Sweet! I see that you have a CNC router. What sort of CNC is it? planning to get a small one to play around. Or maybe a laser cutter

It's a ripoff of a Zen tool works 7x7, I added a rc helicopter motor and an er11 collets. With that I get 22k rpm and can hold upto 7mm shanks. I'm currently working on a moving gantry router but I think it might take a while.

If you get a router you can always have a laser to bolt on/off if you use a diode laser for easy of use, I think they goto 5w now. This is my current build, it has a long way to go....

[oneKone]

Messed around with the coil today. Absolute longest arcs I can get is 280mm to an ungrounded fluro tube.

[Mads Barnkob]

Great results

I can see that you found out how adding more topload capacitance increases spark length, this works until a certain point where the inverter/secondary coil can no longer feed enough energy to keep the top charged and it will start to run very unstable.

Like when I burned my primary coil due to secondary/primary flash over:

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[oneKone]

This might be considered a bit of a dig...... But I think it's ok.

For a while I considered this project finished. But when the big sstc build came to an end I wanted to transform the small sstc. The controller is a standard PLL circuit, the gate driver is a classic 32/31 configuration but with bd139/140 totem pole config for a more robust switching method. I originally designed it like this because the driver chips became hot in cw operation with 60n60, but after a change to irfp460 MOSFETs everything runs very cool.


The original secondary lost about 60mm in height due to an arc over and it's running a 7 turn internal primary.

[Mads Barnkob]

That looks real good, always nice to see a boxed up project!

Is it old 5,25" hard drive platters as the topload?

Excuse me for not know that you were Chris on facebook, when I asked about using the picture for the guide

[oneKone]

That looks real good, always nice to see a boxed up project!

Is it old 5,25" hard drive platters as the topload?

Excuse me for not know that you were Chris on facebook, when I asked about using the picture for the guide

wow... tbh i don't think I've ever seen a 5.25" hdd. these ones were from 3.5" hdds i retired from my nas.

haha all good. it would be a complete stab in the dark to associate forum members to actual people.