6" Coil Update now 72" and better lighting

[Bradselph]

6.6 Secondary Coil 24AWG Wire 28" with a 7"x23" Topload
58nf beer bottle capacitors with a 11 turn 1/4" copper tubing primary coil. the spark gap is a harbor freight special grinder with a 8" disc cutout with 8 1/4" brass bolts speed varied by variac 110v input seems to be the sweet spot

Power supply is made of 4 1kw 120v Microwave Transformers in banks of 2 for 240v input with 4800v out and mid point grounded then parrelled each to double the current to about 1.8amps at 4800v
then half wave multiplied to 9,600v. and a 5th 1kw microwave core with primary removed only secondary remains to be used as a charging choke to save the diode bank from kickback and also give the capacitor a flyback charging effect to 19kv there is no smoothing capacitor so its 120hz pulsed DC

so far longest measured strike has been 72" 

Hopefully this is a better amount of lighting for you guys.

I updated my grinder spark gap and have yet to enclose it for safety but I took that risk as I have with running this thing period.

[klugesmith]

Looking good, Brad.  It's a little hard to confidently get the power supply details from your words; have you got time to show us a diagram?

[Bradselph]

Sorry i havnt fotten a chance to make a diagram explaining the transformer setup but i have got a few more pictures and a small video uploaded recently on Instagram

https://www.instagram.com/bselph512/

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGYCi_ehkMRocAjGaenNsGjrfi2GF1I_xc8l2A0/?igshid=1nkuumzp36qzr


But ill attach some here i stacked my other 6" toroid from my 4" coil and confirmed the need for a bigger toroid the output became alot larger and longer

[Zipdox]

Your Instagram is private.

[Mads Barnkob]

I would love to see detailed pictures of your power supply, spark gap and beer bottle capacitors. For a bottle capacitor MMC coil you are getting some real good spark length and stable performance that has small hickups properly more likely to be rotating spark gap mis-firing.

As Zipdox notes, we can not see your instagram account content. It is also better for historic reasons to upload directly to the forum, that way nothing is lost for the future as all the content is hosted together and not on external hosts away from the forum.

[Bradselph]

The hiccups are definitely the spark gap i got a good look at what was happening a few nights ago

I have the spark gap setup with another gap in series to help quenching as without it the arcs would trail half way around the disc and i remade the gap and placed the gaps next to each other and using a squirrel cage fan to blow on both the gaps at once to help quenching it work better but now that im adding more power i started to get what i thought was more trailing arcs but thats not what was happing the spark gap is actually using the hot air the fan is blowing to power arc about 4" between each gap.

I'll get a few pictures of most of my setup before i fix the spark gap. Its a low budget build so its kinda embarrassing compared to most but the spark length im getting and the good words of encouragement leads me to believe you guys wont pick on me too much

I will also say the power supply is definitely on edge of destruction as evident in alot of my videos you can see the transformers arcing to there core when the coil strikes the bottle caps and thats mostly the reason for locating the capacitor under the coil itself instead of beside it like used before in crates making the capacitor on a rolling platform was the best way to move the mass weight of them without killing my back

Another note worth mentioning is the beers caps are almost a year old now and ive broken maybe 6-8 for various reasons none of them have lost any capacitance all still hover about 0.9 to 1.2nf each

I will say ive learned what works and doesnt work by trying and failing alot so the things ive found to work are what you see

I fixed the Instagram and definitely agree to upload onsite as well for archive reasons I'll try to get picture's and a diagram for you guys soon