Problems with connecting my power supply to my tesla coil

Thread Starter

gustav2

Joined Mar 22, 2018
26
Hello, recently i built a tiny tesla coil bought from aliexpress, it can generate a tiny arc of about 5-10mm and it can play music. The only problem is when i connect it to my power supply the voltage on the supply drops from 24v to around 6 volts without drawing too much current, i get to see a arc for around half a second. However when i connect it to a 24 volt laptop power supply it works perfectly fine. Why doesn't this work with my normal psu? Does it have something to do with the radiation comming from the coil? My power supply is a home made one based on a ltc3780; a 10A 28V boost-buck converter connected to a 500 watt pc psu and a volt/ampmeter. The laptop psu is a 24volt 4A.
Thanks for helping me out!
 

dacflyer

Joined Nov 19, 2010
31
sounds like your 500 watt PS is not putting out what you think it is,, look at the label for the outputs.
which output voltage are you using ? the 12 volts supply and up are less current than the 5V and 3.3v they are where most of your current is.
find you a beefier current PS for your needed voltage.
 

Thread Starter

gustav2

Joined Mar 22, 2018
26
I'm sure the problem is not the psu, i can connect a relatively heavy motor to it and run it at 14 volt 8 amps the psu doesnt have any problems with that. Also i did not limit the current. When i connect the tesla the voltage drops to 8 volt and it draws about 300mA. Im still thinking that it could be the coils electromagnetic field messing with the boost-buck controller but i have no clue how/why this effects the controller
 
You could move the power supply 8 or 10 feet away from the coil--if it still does not work you can eliminate interactive inductance. If it does work you can move the supply closer and closer to the coil and find where they begin to interact.

I would guess that your power supply is shutting itself down to a low voltage, low current, probably because it is being overloaded by the coil.
 

MisterBill2

Joined Jan 23, 2018
18,176
Hello, recently i built a tiny tesla coil bought from aliexpress, it can generate a tiny arc of about 5-10mm and it can play music. The only problem is when i connect it to my power supply the voltage on the supply drops from 24v to around 6 volts without drawing too much current, i get to see a arc for around half a second. However when i connect it to a 24 volt laptop power supply it works perfectly fine. Why doesn't this work with my normal psu? Does it have something to do with the radiation comming from the coil? My power supply is a home made one based on a ltc3780; a 10A 28V boost-buck converter connected to a 500 watt pc psu and a volt/ampmeter. The laptop psu is a 24volt 4A.
Thanks for helping me out!
The difference in power supplies is that the one with the failing output is not able to handle the load. It is probable that the Tesla coil draws a higher current in brief pulses, and it is also probable that the power supply does not have an adequate output filter capacitance. AND, it may well be that it has developed a high resistance connection someplace. That does happen quite a bit.
 
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