How to properly wire capacitors and coils in a Tesla Coil

Thread Starter

fpicoral

Joined Apr 16, 2019
1
I'm working on a project to build a small tesla coil and I'm mostly following these tutorials:
I was having some trouble with the wiring. What I understood that I have to do is the following:
  • Connect the base of secondary to unique ground
  • Connect the HV generator to both screws of the spark gap
  • Connect the beginning of the primary coil to a screw of the spark gap
  • Connect all capacitors together and wire them to the end of the primary coil
  • Connect the base of the capacitors (wrapped in aluminum foil) to a spark gap screw (the opposite screw that has the beginning of the primary connected)
But I have a few questions:
  • To which screw of the spark gap should I connect the HV generator positive? The one that is connected to the base of the capacitors or to the one that is connected to the primary coil?
The generator that I'm using is a CRT TV fly back that outputs around 14kV and uses 220AC to power up.
What wire should I use to make the connections between the generator and the spark gap? I thought about using 2.5mm.

To the coil, I'm using 24AWG for the secondary (30cm of height, around 1000 turns) and 3mm copper wire for the primary (10 turns). To the capactiors, I'm using 6x16oz salt, water and aluminium foil capacitors. Is this enough or I should have more capacitors?

The electric diagram is this one but I can't read these diagrams:



Am I doing something wrong/could do something better?
 

BR-549

Joined Sep 22, 2013
4,931
You do not understand what you are doing. Please stop. It would be dangerous enough....if you followed directions.

Now, without any understanding.....you want to change things.

You are not thinking about the danger you are in.

Find another "toy" to play with, this one kills.

AC line driven tesla coils are not a learning circuit. That's why they warn you.
 
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