How does a Tesla Coil work
Posted: Sunday, September 07, 2008
by Robert Benjamin
One time when I was a young boy I saw a documentary on tv, that happened to show a large tesla coil in operation at some college, from that moment on the Tesla Coil bug had bitten me. I knew someday I would have to own one of these wonderful devices. The loud noise, the powerful arcs of flowing electric was completely amazing. Now that I am getting older, I am the proud owner of three tesla coils, a wimhurst machine, van de graff generator, odin coil, and other high voltage devices.
If you do some searching on the internet or other sources for tesla coils, most places try to explain these devices in terms that only a physics expert can understand. I have broken down the tesla coil into it's 6 main parts or components, with easy to understand terminology on the operation. The 6 main components are the transformer, capacitor, spark gap, primary coil, secondary coil and discharge sphere.
The TRANSFORMER takes 110 volt wall socket current or current from another source, and steps it up to several thousand volts (depending on the transformer). CAPACITOR - Acts like a battery, and takes the stepped-up voltage and stores it until it's fully charged. Once fully charged, the SPARK-GAP fires, releasing all of the capacitors stored energy in a sngle powerful burst or pulse. From the SPARK-GAP, the current flows to the large PRIMARY COIL. The PRIMARY COIL, is usually made from thick copper wire or even pipe, consisting of 5-25 turns or coils. This large copper coil produces a strong magntic field as the current flows through it, the current is then picked up by the SECONDARY COIL. The SECONDARY COIL, acts like another transformer, and consists of numerous turns or coils of smaller gauge copper wire. Here the current continues building by the effects of the magnetic field on the copper, until it reaches massive voltage levels. This current moves up into the DISCHARGE SPHERE. The DISCHARGE SPHERE also acts like a simple capacitor (storage battery), before discharging the current as sparks and corona.
There is a website that describes the tesla coil and numerous other high voltage devices in detail, this website is called: How a Tesla Coil Works and it may be found at this url: http://www.rb59.com/tesla-coil/tesla-coil.html
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Robert W. Benjamin has been in the software business on the internet since 2001, and has been producing low-cost software for many years. He first released software on the AMIGA and C64 computer systems in the late 1970's-80's. Robert has written many articles pertaining to numerous subjects, and he has also developed over 7 different websites.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Great article! Finally someone has explained in simple terms how these things work! A++++++
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