Hmmm.. So I wound an unusable secondary, but it’s 1200 turns of yummy goodness; what do I do with it? How about making a Faux Coil? I have an old Radio Shack Illuma-Storm plasma globe, and it fits atop the secondary perfectly. I squared off some scrap 1/4″ plexi-glass for a base, and cut about 5 inches of 3-inch PVC for a primary form (looked pleasing), grabbed some Little Rubber Feet (LRF’s), a lamp-cord, lamp-socket, screws, and:
After putting the base together and figuring out how I was going to assemble and glue everything together (in reverse-order, of course), I wound the faux primary (ugh, grunt; next time I’ll use smaller wire), polished it with steel-wool and coated it with clear-gloss (non-yellowing) Krylon enamel:
After epoxying the faux-primary to the base, I ran the lamp-cord through the base and the primary, and up through a hole in the secondary (for the plasma-globe topper), then the secondary was epoxied into place. I tied a knot in the cord (at the appropriate place) as a strain-relief
I drilled a few large holes in the base of the bad secondary so that cooling air could be drawn up and out/over the globe electronics.
After letting it dry a bit, I screwed the AC wiring to a lamp-socket base, and screwed in the Illuma-storm to give it a test. Like most real Tesla Coils, it’s very weak in daylight, and much more impressive in the dark. This globe has a mode that activates it based on ambient sound, as-well-as full-time operation. Here’s how it turned out:
The whole faux coil is about 33 inches tall. Now that the wiring is done, I have a small thumb-switch to put on the lamp-cord for turning it on & off.
Thank you, I have recently been searching for information about this topic for ages and yours is the best I have discovered so far.
Great work keep it coming
I have that same illuma storm got it years ago when it first came out. Over the years, it has gotten so weak, I can’t see it unless you put your hands on it or its pitch dark. I don’t know if the globe is weak or if the unit has lost its high voltage.
At first I thought you were building a large tesla coil transformer and use the output to drive the globe directly to make a supercharged plasma ball but found out it was just the base. Now I think I’m going to try to bump up the power output of mine.
It’s a cool looking base though. I like it.
Keep up the good work.