My biggest coil achieving a 10 foot arc at the UK Teslathon in Corby (photo by - Richie Burnett)

Alan Sharp's

Tesla Coil Site

Please note projects described here use very high voltages and should only be attempted by experienced constructors who know the dangers

Contact Information - and about me

Conventional Coiling

10 foot arcs

Including how to build the big one

Calculations and construction

Fairly Unique Stuff

An Unusual top load

Yes - we put on the opera

4 interacting coils

Physics and Theology

Quantum Mechanics and Reality, Cosmology and the existence of God

My other site

I try to find the best free windows software for home users and churches plus help on putting up your own website and using multimedia

There are good free options for office, antivirus, firewalls, anti spyware, and web design.

More Tesla

First Ever UK Teslathon May 1998

Solid State Coils

Experiments with resonance and output transformer
The Quadratic Mutation

Waiting for the next Lunatic project

Old Stuff

Design and Theory

Helpful Hints

My First Coil

This is my first coil, the top toroid has a diameter of about 18 inches. I have driven this coil with the Mosfet driver - giving about 6" sparks but in the photo above its being used as a conventional coil, the power supply is a 2000v, 1000w microwave transformer in series with a 5500v 300mA transformer, with about 0.09uF of capacitors. Spark gap is 4 pieces of 2" diameter copper pipe. It's not a great performer - but its as much spark as I can handle in my garage.

About Tesla Coils

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a brilliant inventor, responsible in large measure for our modern system of A.C. mains power. He had a much grander idea though - the wireless distribution of electrical power using magnifying transmitters. His Tesla coils as well as being radio transmitters generate extremely high voltages and are often used for special effects in the movies.

A tesla coil is essentially an air cored transformer operating at its resonance frequency. The secondary coil, together with the capacitor formed between the output terminal and earth forms a tuned circuit if stimulated at its resonance frequency oscillations will build up until the voltage is high enough to breakdown the air and sparks break out.

Tesla used high voltage transformers, sparkgaps, and capacitors to energize his coils. Such are built by enthusiasts today and are capable of producing spark lengths of 3 feet or much, much more. There are problems though, with obtaining parts, with reliable and safe operation, and with the amount of interference generated. I decided for my first coil therefore to use modern electronics to produce the high frequency power with which to stimulate the coil.

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I try to find the best free windows software for churches and individuals plus web site help.