Tesla Coil Finished!!

Finished off my homebuilt Tesla coil today. This involved finishing the primary coil sliding clamp. It required a way to clamp it to the primary coil and the fitting of an copper lug to make the electrical connection to the MMC bank.

The above pic shows the two parts of the clamp before adding a clamping mechanism. I wanted to keep this mechanism as simple as possible as I may redesign the whole clamp depending on the eventual tap point on the primary coil. I removed a 15mm length from the right hand end of the top piece and silver soldered it to the right hand end of the lower section. I then drilled a horizontal 2.5mm hole lengthways down the centre of the block which was tapped out to take an M3 allen bolt.

This produced a simple clamping method which still permits the two parts to separate to allow for repositioning. Adding a copper lug for the electrical connection just meant adding another threaded hole on the underside of the clamp.

I cut a 1.2m length of GTO wire to complete the electrical connection from the MMC bank to the clamp. 1.2m was needed so the clamp could reach any point around the primary coil. Each end of the GTO wire was coated in solder before fitting into the copper lugs. That's it Tesla coil finished, well almost. Have ordered a 33k ohm 2W resistor that I will fit across the terminals of the 40uF capacitor in the SSG circuit and bleed the stored charge away after each run of the Tesla coil, a simple safety feature.

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