Welcome new members, come say hello and tell a little about yourself :)

[prabhatkumar]

Hello there everyone !! I am prabhat and I come from India. I am a first year electronics engineering student who has great interest in this field but I know very little . I am trying to learn a lot of things from places like YouTube and Google and also tried building some small projects . I have had built a small 100 watt induction heater which works quite well. The latest one being the sstc 3 from kaizer site itself. And i have opened 2 threads regarding the same out of which one is completely resolved . I had passion for this field for a long time but due to lack of theory knowledge in this field I get stuck many a times and thats when I need this forum's members help. My best wishes with everyone during this covid  -19 outbreak
 Stay safe !!

[robg]

Hello - my name is Rob. I've been designing custom analog bipolar and CMOS integrated circuits for 28 years. I've done chips for everything from military to toy trains to medical equipment. DC to GHz. I now live in Montana (USA) and work as a consultant. 

 The high voltage world is a total departure for me. None of my chips have ever exceed 500 mW. Most are less than 1 mW.  I have very little experience with power electronics like IGBTs or even discrete components. 
 
Four years ago my son, who was 13 at the time, saw Electroboom's Tesla Coil and wanted to build his own. While we could duplicate Medhi's poor results, we wanted more. My son actually gave a lot of good ideas that advanced us to where  we got much stronger arcs but had a problem blowing up transistors.  As an aside, it turns out that you can be a very well respected electrical engineer for nearly thirty years, but if you smoke up the house *just once* your wife makes you work with a fire extinguisher by your side. I tell her I now put fuses in all power lines, but she is still tense when I'm working on this. 

Covid-19 has given me time to resurrect the project. Although I do now have a single transistor design that can produce 10" arcs reliably, I still blow a lot up trying to improve the performance. I wish I learned about TVS diodes before last week and saved a lot of transistors...

[johnf]

Welcome Prabhat
as an engineer hopeful you have much to learn
you learn from your own mistakes ie working out what went wrong and doing it again with that mistake fixed and now looking for the next one.
you do learn a little from others mistakes, but your own are where the most learning comes from
Go out and experiment if you do not understand why it went wrong document fully and put it up here on this site, --the brains trust is sure to help

enjoy

[Rowdy]

Hello all, well I just read thru all the "Welcome new members " posts and have now understood why 4hv hasn't
replied to my registration, a few of them are here!! To start with, I am 56 yo service tech for Phenix Technologies in Maryland. We manufacture High Voltage, High Current, High Power test equipment and components. Started learning about electronics about 9 yrs old, spent a lot of time at Radio Shack and reading their books, then more formal study in high school. Went into the military and got more formal study at TOFTOY
at Redstone Arsenal Huntsville, AL. My MOS was 27E, TOW/Dragon missile guidance technician. After military
I went to College and got my Associate Degree in electronics. My passion is HV and working on a frankenstein
SSTC that is mix of Steve Wards SSTC-5 and a few others. As I mentioned I am a service tech, I travel a great
deal around the world, and COVID has put that to a halt. So lots of time to get frankenstein spitting lots of PD  . I hope to learn more from you guys and contribute to this forum. It's great to be here!

[Mads Barnkob]

Hello all, well I just read thru all the "Welcome new members " posts and have now understood why 4hv hasn't
replied to my registration, a few of them are here!! To start with, I am 56 yo service tech for Phenix Technologies in Maryland. We manufacture High Voltage, High Current, High Power test equipment and components. Started learning about electronics about 9 yrs old, spent a lot of time at Radio Shack and reading their books, then more formal study in high school. Went into the military and got more formal study at TOFTOY
at Redstone Arsenal Huntsville, AL. My MOS was 27E, TOW/Dragon missile guidance technician. After military
I went to College and got my Associate Degree in electronics. My passion is HV and working on a frankenstein
SSTC that is mix of Steve Wards SSTC-5 and a few others. As I mentioned I am a service tech, I travel a great
deal around the world, and COVID has put that to a halt. So lots of time to get frankenstein spitting lots of PD  . I hope to learn more from you guys and contribute to this forum. It's great to be here!

Hi Rowdy and welcome to HVF!

Great resume and I hope you will feel welcome and get all the help you need, looking forward to see a project thread about your SSTC.

Phenix seems to be in a great variance of fields, any specific you work in as service technician?

I would like one of these, if you happen to have one at work that is just collecting dust and is to be thrown out https://www.phenixtech.com/Files/Admin/PDF/40302_Ultra_HV_DC_Test_Systems.pdf

[Rowdy]

Hey Mads, LOL no we do not have one of those in the scrap pile, customers tend to have those fixed. Lots of money in one of those units. Actually I service and calibrate everything we make.

[Morvandium]

I'm Rob Kellner (you'll see my full name in my documentation if I post projects/schematics), but online prefer Morvandium.  I started taking apart electronics  around age 5.  My last formal education in electronics was 20 years ago.  I'm a bit of a jack of all trades/renaissance man -- I enjoy learning to solve new problems far more than perfecting my skills solving variations of the same problem.

A couple years ago I started Lichtenberg wood burning, and was disturbed by the horribly unsafe practices/equipment setups most burners used -- including stories of deaths.  That led me to building safer equipment, including a high voltage power supply (+2kVAC/-2kVAC/+2kVDC/-2kVDC outputs).

Many burners don't understand basic concepts of electricity, and couldn't explain, in physics terms, WHY they did what they did.  I looked to other high voltage communities for the theory/design -- something I enjoy even more than constructing a project.  I realized, while revising my power supply design (when adding the -4kV/4kV/ -8kVDC/8kVDC/ -12kVDC/12kvDC rails), a Tesla coil wasn't TOO much more work.  That led me here.

I enjoy the challenge of building using primarily scrapped or used parts, and the occasional liquidation/discontinued parts sale--though not to the point of idiocy or sacrificing safety.  I prefer durable, versatile and robust equipment.  Before I build a coil, I'm planning a variable-speed RSG, for use with both Lichtenberg wood burning (to make various rate pulsed DC to study effects on wood burn patterns), and later on for a TC.  I'm still deciding which approach I'll take for a tank capacitor/MMC, but realizing I might have to put some real money in there.  Since the TC will be more demanding on the tank, that's what I'll design for.

When it comes to SSTCs, I appreciate the circuitry and design far more than construction.  I do love poring over the schematics and love the near-perfect resonance they can achieve.  There's something primal about a cracking rotary spark gap that I enjoy, like a hammer on hot iron.  In my mind, SSTCs are to RSGTCs what giraffes are to rhinoceroses. 

I also program in several languages and have an education in computer science, though I'm a bit rusty.  I love understanding things through the lens of physics, though I have to admit, as I was teaching myself about the physics of inductors and transformers, I realized I don't seem to learn as fast as I did 20 years ago.  I think I might be getting old, lol.

I've also done residential electrical and a little home automation work.  I'm an avid fan of quality documentation--I have a degree in English--though sometimes I have trouble staying concise.  See the last 6 paragraphs as an example.

[friday]

I tried to log onto 4hv but couldnt happen, I tried change pass word arghh got a new connection so old email has gone,
anyway Im here , Paris form NZ

see familiar names on here

[Mads Barnkob]

I tried to log onto 4hv but couldnt happen, I tried change pass word arghh got a new connection so old email has gone,
anyway Im here , Paris form NZ

see familiar names on here

Welcome to HVF!

You will see that many users known from 4hv is also here on HVF, the high voltage community is not bigger than that

[Halfcorp]

Greetings all!

I'm an electrical & electronic engineering and computer science student from the UK. I have been fascinated with electronics/engineering and creating things from a very early age, and started my high voltage endeavors in 2013 by building Jacobs ladders and Tesla coils. Since then I've spent the vast majority of my free time on all kinds of project's including lasers, hydrogen generators, flyback drivers, Marx generators, high current metal melting transformers, Fusor's, an electric foundry and have built 3 Tesla coils to date. In recent years, I have gravitates a lot more towards microprocessors, digital systems and both high and low level programming. A lot of my projects these days revolve around Arduino's, embedded systems and servers. I suppose my career path right now is headed towards processor micro-architecture and design, as I am currently on my second of three internships with Arm and have always had a deep interest in computer engineering. However, I will definitely continue my interest in power electronics in my spare time; I am currently building my first DRSSTC right now  . I knew our HV community was small, so I am thrilled to see a new forum bursting with activity all these years later with more and more people getting into the subject! 

I document most of my projects on my YouTube and my blog linked here, but I haven't had time yet to update them with some of my older and my most recent experiments:

YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbYNLXCvqlCoLev-WvJ37oQ
Blog - http://halflife390science.blogspot.com/

I look forward to seeing you all around the forum 

[RoadReaper]

Hello,  My name is Chris Law and I live in Fort Wayne Indiana, USA.  I am a power sports tech that pretends to be an electrical engineer on the weekends.  I have been interested in electricity  from a young age but just started building Tesla coils about 7 years ago.  I am building my first pair of DRSSTC's and am close to finishing them but could use some advice on the controllers.  That is what has brought me to this forum.  I have built a spark gap coil that Make Magazine had plans for on their web site called "The Six Pack Tesla Coil", it turned out well but not a very complicated build.  I have also built some simple circuit boards and a 3D printer from a kit, the See Me CNC's Rostock Max V2.  The controller circuit for the DRSSTC is far more complicated than anything I have built and will be posting to ask a few questions about it.

[antimatter503]

Hey everyone, my name is Will. I am a metal fabricator from Oregon. Electronics are a hobby of mine. I just started a youtube channel about HV. Not much there yet but a dual MOT arc setup.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy--Ux3LZYj19p3snYaODIg

[Mads Barnkob]

Welcome Halfcorp, Chris and Will!

Looking forward to see your projects and also subscribed to your channels

[uzzors2k]

Hello, I'm Eirik, also known as uzzors2k online. I've been working on high voltage and electronics projects for the last fifteen years, but I was definitely most active for the first five. I started small with a 555 powered flyback transformer driver, and built up from there. Eventually constructing a DRSSTC, induction heater, can crusher, high speed arc-flash photography setup, underwater ROV, and several x-ray machines. I have a personal website I've tried to keep up to date which documents most of my projects (see my signature). This forum seems like a lively community, and I hope to contribute to it.

[GKnapp]

Hello, my name is Guy and I'm from Massachusetts in the US.  I've always loved sparks and plasma globes and such, and started getting into actually making things just a year or two ago. Just a beginner and hobbyist, but I've now made a successful low power sgtc, sstc and vttc. I've been looking at this forum as a guest for quite a while and figured it was time I joined for real! Seems like a neat community.

[Atomillo]

Hi:

My name is Cai Arcos, from Barcelona, Spain. I'm currently in my second year of electronic engineering, and I have been doing electronics as a hobby for some years now. I have only recently become interested in the field of Pulsed Power: this summer I've been doing a lot of reading on gas discharges as well as pulsed power systems in general, and I hope to be able to contribute to the forum as much as my limited knoledge allows me to!

[KenM_Whitearc04]

Greetings,

Used to be on the 4hv forums when it was really active until hobby interests shifted and I had less time to ionize air and make silicone violently explode. That is until a few weeks ago when I was reminded of great scotts project of taking an ebay slayer oscilator and turning it into a proper sstc. That piqued my interest again especialy once I watched a different video where they pointed out that the circuit begins to oscilate at 6v.

With that in mind I dug out my old small coil to test out the slayer circuit in hopes to use it as a resonant frequency meter and then back checking it against deep fried neons calculator, then further back checking it against java tc and mads calculators. This got me thinking I should try and do a progressive complexity sstc project, where I start with the limited performance of a slayer then slowly add parts and change configurations until I come up with as large of arcs as I can get from 24VDC @ 10A. Also in hopes of finally incorperating in a psoc for wider and more precise measuring and control. Especially after I remembered see the work you guys had done on the UDB.

[John]

Hi all ,
I'm really enjoying all of the really cool innovations. I'm relatively new to the micro electronics world but I'm learning  I've built several drsstc coils as well as am attempting qcw  . Am having trouble with buck converter right now as I have no scope due to circumstances! I have some ideas but its gonna take some of you smart guys to implement. I'm really impressed with the sharing of info . Was wondering is it possible to create qcw ramp with ic s instead of programming? I think its possible and maybe a good challenge for some of the seniors.
Ps after alot if dead silicon I've got some good soldering skills.

[costas_p]

Hello all, my name is Costas, I live in Crete Island, Greece.

I am an HVAC technician and like to build logic circuits and tesla coils as a hobby.

[Daniel Uhrenholt]

Hi all,

My name is Daniel and I am from Denmark.

I have had a decade or so brake from building Tesla Coils, I bought a house, got me a wife and had two kids instead

I’m an educated Toolmaker, and I am currently working as an 5 axis CNC programmer using a software called Hypermill, and do a little programming of custom macros when needed in the production.

I’m building a workshop/hobby room at the moment, and the plan is to get the rest of my Tesla Coils and projects home again after many years of storage at my parents house. My wife can’t understand how anyone can collect so many things and parts as I have done in my 37 years on planet earth. I hope to get space for it all in the small workshop/hobby room, and will post some pictures when Diablo Tonnere(my big DRSSTC) is coming home again and is ready for a rebuild.

I will post a thing from time to time

Cheers,

Daniel Uhrenholt