I have constructed my tesla coil. But i couldn't find the MMC capacitors for the primary capacitor bank. So what is the alternative way of making capacitor bank? Are there any suitable capacitor types to do the job?
Tesla coil construction
tesla-coil
Related Solutions
That is a disaster waiting to happen. Here are just a couple of the problems:
- You can't use galvanized steel bolts for your spark gap. They'll quickly overheat, erode, and the wooden base will probably catch fire. Also, the zinc plating will burn off in a cloud of toxic fumes. Try a Richard Quick gap or a sucker gap.
- You can't use microwave oven capacitors as your primary capacitor. They can't handle the high peak discharge currents and will explode, showering the room with hot oil.
- The hookup wire you've used to interconnect the tank components is too thin.
- The primary (the ~6 turn coil made from copper tubing) is probably tuned incorrectly. You need a movable tap.
- The primary-secondary coupling is too high.
- A single MOT has too low of a voltage. It's not impossible to build a working Tesla coil with a single MOT, but it's quite challenging and from the pictures it is very obvious that you don't have the experience needed.
I am very worried for your safety. You should do more research, starting with this safety guide: http://www.pupman.com/safety.htm You should start off with a different high voltage transformer - a 12 kV, 30 mA neon sign transformer (NST) will be both much safer and easier to get working. MOTs take no prisoners.
You don't mention how big the Tesla coil is, or the diameter of the pipe you want to use for a toroid. The problem with an octagonal pseudo-toroid is that there will be sharp edges on the seams that could lead to corona leakage, reducing the resulting arc length.
I generally use flexible aluminum ducting made for clothes dryer venting, and I cover it in aluminum foil tape to smooth out the edges. This is actually a very common method, and is very popular due to its low cost and ease of sourcing the parts.
I fill in the inside of the toroid with aluminum pie plates, and connect the top wire of the secondary coil to the plate. This ensures there is a good electrical connection between the secondary coil and the topload.
The final topload looks something like this (not my image):
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Best Answer
Search EBay for Door-knob Capacitors. These are capacitors that are used in industrial semiconductor laser high voltage discharge systems. They are able to handle the voltages you will encounter in the Tesla coil primary circuit. You can usualy find some up for bid. The co-axial terminals are threaded and so you can use studs to create series arrangements to increase voltage capacity and gang the serial assemblies in parallel between sandwich metal plates (you'll have to cut and drill these yourself) to get the capacitance you need.