The final bits.

Hi. This must be the last job on my Tesla Coil build. I need to make an earthing point on the main Tesla coil body. Most of the earth leads in my Tesla are connected to the earthing point on the neon transformer. These are

1. Connection to the strike rail underneath the primary coil perspex covering disc.
2. Connection to the lower terminal on the secondary coil.
3. Connection to the central rail on the Terry filter.

So I need to connect this point to my earthing plate on the conservatory wall. I could just run a wire from the earth plate through one of the vent holes in the Tesla base to the earth terminal on the neon transformer. The problem with this solution is that it would be impossible to remove this lead as the ring terminal needed on the end of the wire will not pass through the vent hole. Even if I enlarge the vent hole it would still involve removing one of the perspex walls of the base unit to attach/detach this wire.

After some thought I decided to fit an earthing point on the outside of the back perspex wall of the main Tesla unit. This would consist of 2 copper terminal lugs, one mounted inside, one mounted outside, connected through the perspex by a M6 bolt.

Above is the hardware for the terminal, I will probably replace the stainless M6 bolt with a homemade copper stud but will need to procure an M6 die first.

I made a small lead that finishes in a ring terminal to connect to the new earth point. I fitted the lead to give me a better idea where to site the hole for the terminal.

Marked up the point to drill the 6mm hole. I drilled the hole freehand, there were no obstructions and it was pretty easy to keep the drill at right angles to the perspex.

Result was a nice neat 6mm hole. My OCD placed it on the centre with the vent holes and level with the end of the neon transformer.

Here's the hardware fitted. I used 2 of the copper lugs from Alan at teslastuff.com. These are the best quality electrical lugs I have seen.

The terminal was connected to the short lead from the neon transformer earth point and the perspex sidewall replaced. Job done.

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More "Ground" Work on the Tesla Coil

Hi again. Over the last couple of days I have been working on the grounding system for my Tesla. As mentioned in my last post, I had already sank one copper rod in the lawn. Plan was to get another couple of rods form B+Q and have 3 ground points spread across the lawn. Slight problem, I sank the first rod several weeks back and I now can't find it!

So 3 rods were purchased from my local B+Q. The rods are about £12 each, they are 1m long 10mm diameter copper plated rod with a nice copper terminal clamp.

The 3 grounding wires will pass through the conservatory wall and meet in the pattress box. They will pass through 3 separate holes drilled with a super long 8mm masonry bit.

I removed a small piece of turf (about 18" square) and dug out some earth down to about 10". Here's a picture of the first hole. The wire will be sank under the turf by cutting a line with a spade and easing the turf up and pushing the wire under (a trick learned watching Virgin installation engineers).

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The copper plated rod was hammered into the centre of the hole. You have to fit the clamp onto the rod before you sink it as the hammering will splay out the top of the rod making it impossible to slide the clamp over afterwards. The grounding wire was attached using a solder ring terminal and the hole back filled and turf replaced.

Above you can see the position of the second ground wire. The process was repeated exactly the same as the first ground point.

And here is the 3rd and final ground wire laid out. All the wires run into the gravel filled trench that runs around the conservatory wall. You can see Karel (wife) covering the two completed grounds.

Here's the last rod being sank. Think I was pretty lucky that all the rods went in without to much trouble.

Here are all the 3 wires in place. Next job is to wire up the grounding plate in the conservatory wall.

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Tesla coil ground connections

Today I decided to finish some of the electrical connections. Firstly I needed to complete some ground connections, 3 to be exact, and when I say ground I mean literally ground not mains earth ground. These are :-

1. Strike rail to ground.
2. Secondary coil to ground.
3. Neon transformer to ground.

I decided all 3 of the above will start from the ground post on the neon transformer as this has a large enough post to accomodate the multiple ring terminals.

You can see this terminal in the pic above, it's the lower terminal with the blue sheathed wire attached. In this pic I have removed the perspex side panel.

As the 3 grounds will exit the lower level perspex box I needed to drill 3 holes in the perspex side panel. I masked up the side panel so to protect the perspex and so I could mark my drill points. The welding wire for the grounds is 8mm in diameter but I decided to drill 12mm holes so the wires could pass through with the ring terminals attached. This would make assembly and maintenance much easier.

The left hole would house the secondary coil connection, the right the strike rail connection and the centre would be to the grounding spike. I marked the top on the masking tape mainly to show this side is the outside as the panels do fit better one way than the other. I drilled the three 12mm holes and then removed the masking tape. But unfortunately failed to note which side was marked top. So I took my best guess and offered up the panel and proceeded to refit the mounting bolts. Guess what?

Wrong way! the bolts did not line up correctly and the result is shown above. The perspex corner post cracked. The bolts did feel a little tight, I should have realised the panel was the wrong way round. Took me an extra hour to make the replacement post.

Here's the side panel and new corner post back in situ. Now to make up the wire lengths required for the two ground connections.

The first is the strike rail connection. The wire end at the strike rail fastened inside a copper lug so I impregnated the copper strands with solder to stop the wire end disintegrating due to repeated clamping. The other end terminates in a ring terminal which was also soldered.

Next I did the ground connection to the lower end of the secondary coil. Both ends of this wire were fitted with ring terminals, again soldered.

Above you can see the routing and end connections of these two ground wires.

I am not going to fit the wire to the ground spike yet, there's no point as it will just get in the way. It will pass through the central hole in the side panel and attach to the ground post of the neon transformer thus connecting the neon transformer, strike rail and secondary coil to ground. The ground spike will be situated in the middle of my back lawn. It will consist of a 4 foot copper rod driven fully into the ground. I will run the connecting wire under the turf across the lawn and out on to the patio.

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