Tesla

Designing your Tesla Coil

Designing your Tesla Coil

My wife and I enjoying Ed Wingate’s Cage of Death in Rochester, NY

August 29, 2003 By Daniel McCauley

September 2003 Rev −

−1−

www.EasternVoltageResearch.com Designing your Tesla Coil

Designing your Tesla Coil Introduction
When I was in the process of designing my first tesla coil in May of 2002, I was hardpressed to findone source that comprehensibly described the process of designing a tesla coil from scratch. Although there were multitudes of awesome websites devoted to tesla coiling, it was extremely difficult to find one that had a step-by-step process that was easy to follow and to the point. There were very informative websites that contained a plethora of design equations, but with no logical descriptionof how to use them properly when designing a tesla coil. There were also many sites that had beautifully built tesla coils on their site, but with not much background information as to the specifications and design of those coils. In this document, my goal is to present a very easy to use step-bystep process to create a simple tesla coil from scratch. I will provide examples using readily availableTesla Cad software as well as simple equations to create and validate a tesla coil design. Please note that the purpose of this document is describe my design process for tesla coils. With the goal of keeping the design process as simple as possible, this document does not include any theory regarding how a tesla coil works. This document assumes that the designer already has a basicunderstanding of how a tesla coil operates.

Where Do I Start?
Good question! The first thing we need to know is that a conventional tesla coil is comprised of five basic fundamental items: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. High Voltage Transformer Primary Capacitor Primary Coil Secondary Coil Toroid (Secondary Top Load)

Please note that the spark gap is not included in this list solely because its design does not affecteither the primary or secondary resonant circuit. The spark gap acts only as a high voltage switch. A proper tesla coil design will have each of these parameters chosen carefully so they all work together at some fixed resonant frequency. Sound complicated? Not really. Lets simplify the tesla coil and break it down into two separate independent circuits. The primary circuit is comprised of thehigh voltage transformer, the primary capacitor, and the primary coil whereas the primary capacitor and the primary coil make up an LC circuit which determines the resonant frequency of the primary circuit.

September 2003 Rev −

−2−

www.EasternVoltageResearch.com Designing your Tesla Coil

Designing your Tesla Coil
The secondary circuit is comprised of a secondary coil and a toroid (topload). The toroid basically is modeled as a capacitance so again, we have an LC circuit which determines the resonant frequency of the secondary circuit. To get a tesla coil to work, we simply need to match the resonant frequency of the primary circuit to the resonant frequency of the secondary circuit. Seems simple, right? Right. So lets get started, and begin our design.

Starting Your DesignDesigning a tesla coil is very easy. As there are five basic fundamental components of a tesla coil, there are five basic fundamental design parameters: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Output Characteristics of High Voltage Transformer Size and Dimensions of Primary Coil Size of Primary Capacitor Size and Dimensions of Secondary Coil Size and Dimensions of Toroid (Secondary Top Load)

Designing a tesla coil isall about having some of the five parameters above known and then designing the unknown parameters. So the more parameters we have upfront, the less design we need to do. Lets take a walk out to the shed and see what kinds of things I can come up with. After rooting through the shed for some time, I have found the following materials: - 4” Diameter PVC Pipe - 15kV / 60mA Neon Sign Transformer...