Tesla Coil Extras

Well it was nearly finished.... I am sure I will keep on posting extra additions and also experiences of my first fire-ups and tunings. First addition was mentioned in my last post, the safety bleed resistor for the large 40uF capacitor in the SSG circuit. This was quite a quick fit, the resistor is only small so I decided to fit it on the side of the module that held the 40uF capacitor. I made 2 identical mounting posts out of 10mm diameter brass rod. The posts are 25mm long and the resistor sits in 3mm diameter horizontal holes 12.5mm up each post.

The resistor legs are clamped by M3 grub screws at 90deg to the mounting holes. Electrical connection to the capacitor are ring terminals onto M4 allen key bolts (stainless of course) into the tops of the mounting posts.

I made up the wires to the resistor starting with female 1/4" piggyback blade connectors which meant I didn't have to amend the existing wires to the SSG, they could just plug into the piggybacks.

While the weather was good I decided to sink the grounding rod in the middle of my back lawn. The rod is 1 metre long and I thought it would take several attempts to sink it as the garden seems to have a thick layer of industrial rubble just under the surface. Must have been my lucky day as I hammered the rod well below the surface on the first attempt. I removed a small square of turf before I started. You can just see the refitted turf in the above pic. Next dry weekend I will run the earth lead from the rod under the lawn turf to the patio.

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First layer plastic surgery

Spent a couple of hours in the garage drilling the various mounting holes in the base. 4 X 6mm holes for the neon transformer and 16 X 4mm holes for the Terry filter, the emf filter and the mains connector module.

Another 12 X 4mm holes were needed to mount the 10x10mm perspex square rod that runs around the perimeter of the base.

These 10x10mm perspex rods provide a means to screw the side panels onto the base.

Multi Mini Capacitor MMC

Today I started on the MMC (multi mini capacitor). The capacitors had arrived from Teslastuff.com a few weeks earlier. The MMC is built up of 40 capacitors, 2 banks of 20 caps in series connected in parallel. Each capacitor is rated at 0.15uf at 2000v as per the original Teslastuff plans.






A bag of 20 capacitors for the first layer of the MMC. This layer would be mounted on a 8mm thick 320mm by 220mm clear perspex board.







The board was covered in masking tape and marked out for drilling.I drilled 1.75mm holes for the cap legs (40 in total), some 4mm holes for mounting onto 1" ceramic stand-offs and 2 6mm holes for the copper lugs. After marking out I attached an identical piece of perspex to the back so I could drill both layers at the same time.







After drilling I mounted the 20 caps to the first level. I twisted the adjacent caps legs together and then laid the bleed capacitors across each cap before soldering.







Also soldered in some copper wire to create the series links between the rows and a couple of terminal loops on the ends.







Above is the first layer completed. The 5 support uprights are 12mm diameter perspex drilled and tapped to accept 4mm bolts. Now for the second layer.






The finished article.






Very pleased with the end result.






Will also be easy to add more layers in the future.






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