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

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.

6.6" OD PVC form Winding 28" of #24AWG Magnet Wire Primary is 0.25 Copper tubing 11 turns
3 Microwave transformers to 68nf bottle caps 7" x 24" topload overall height 60"  targets on the side are about 65" away from center of topload

have 3 12kv 60ma franceformer transformers for this coil but performance was disappointing compared to the brute power of the microwaves

not much changed from the 4" coil besides the increase in bottle caps and how i setup the coil on top of the bottles 70 total in a 7x10 layout.

anything i didn't mention just ask

I’m constantly using the waybackmachine ever since I started anything high voltage and constantly see more sources disappear or turn into spam websites

https://archive.org/web/

Thank you

I noticed that the price difference wasn’t to bad that’s what brought up the question

I’ll definitely invest a few more dollars in just to get the better reliability’ as I have a bad habit of pushing things to the limit and then over it thinking it might handle it 😬

i could see heat doing that as well not just gases

Well I have the pole barn but sadly it’s full of junk 🤣

I’ve thought about adding a precisely placed air vent to my grinder box to help with airflow over the spark gap somehow I may try some other enclosure for it as when I added more power to it by making my own transformers I get a lot of trailing arcs that sound like a sputtering jet engine having a bad day

And it clearly effects the quenching and spark length

It used to take me about 30 minutes to 45 minutes to setup when I first started experimenting with it but after several rainouts I started makings everything modular and now it takes about 10 minutes to setup and go
The biggest problem is the beer bottle caps and best solution I found was milk crates they hold 25 bottles each and are 12”x12” but quick connections on them made it simple to add or remove a crate

figured id share what i been wrecking havoc with for the last 6+ months 

47" strike to grounded target without breakout point



its a 4.25" secondary wound with #22 awg wire 24" winding had enough wire for a 6" form but i wasn't sure about what material to use and until this week this project has only cost the wire and a harbor freight grinder on sale for $9.99  its been hit by a streamer and still kicking

but the money spending as just got serious as Ive purchased 3 x 12kv 60ma NSTs looking for a 4th one still and working on trying to move away from the bottle caps but these things are just ridiculously bullet proof so far Ive only cracked 1 and it was caused by a rogue wire creating a hot spot

Ive had a lot of trial and error with just about every part possible

so far Ive tried too many different type of spark gaps and only 1 has impressed me and actually survived my abuse and that has been the angle grinder its even exploded from a brass electrode deciding it wanted to leave at over 200mph luckily i had enclosed the rotor with 1/2" MDF board so when things went south the wood did its job and stopped deadly projectiles at the cost of itself

Ive also been working on a synchronous motor with a 11" disc and i finally got it to impress me enough to start improving it and get it to actually be "synchronous" since i rushed assembly on it it surges too much but i can get it to lock on by pulsing the power switch for it a couple times so its a lot quieter than the angle grinder and until i tweaked it a little bit i wasn't impressed with it at all almost tossed it until it randomly got in time i guess and started almost matching the spark length of the grinder and it peaked my interest enough that I'm gonna rebuild it the right way and not rush it

my biggest gain in spark length was when i decided to add add 4 more flying electrodes to the grinder for a total of 8 and a large 3/8" aluminum diamond plate under the coil to act as a counterpoise to see if it would help with grounding since the sandy soil is most likely not the best even though i soak the area near the ground rod about 30 minutes before a run