The Science Place in Dallas has a large Tesla coil, built by Lloyd Ritchie. It is wound on a fiberglass form 24 inches in diameter and about 6 feet long. The primary looks to be a couple turns of welding cable wound on the bottom of the secondary. It has no toroid top (Lloyd does not believe in top terminals) and makes 6 foot sparks.

[21k] Coil in action

[17k] The rotary gap.

[23k] The power controller.

[22k] Rear view of coil, showing primary connections.

 

Below are some miscellaneous pictures, including some hot flames, weird people, and a visit to Richard Hull's in Richmond Virginia.

 

[52k] [25k] Two pictures of Wild Bill's coil. He has knocked down one bedroom wall to make room for longer sparks, and has toyed with the idea of chopping a hole in the floor to lower the coil - you can see they don't call the boy wild for nuthin'. The coil is 10.5 inches in diameter, 34 inches long, and has made sparks over 7 feet in length, with about 6 kVa input from a 14.4 kV pole pig. When this lovely coil runs, you find yourself very intimate with some ferocious sparks which are hitting ground wires just inches in front of your face, and then you find you can't back up any further.

[76k] Here is Wild Bill Emery falling out of the sky with the banner for the TCBFW, Tesla Coil Builders of Ft. Worth, Texas. Both Bill and I run coils powered with capacitors that Ed Wingate sold us at Richard Hull's 1996 Teslathon. Hey, Ed, thanks!

[20k] [26k] [15k] Here are three pictures where we pull flaming arcs off a 5 kVa, 34,500 volt potential transformer. We were able to get 18 inch flames on a Jacob's ladder made from 6 foot ground rods. Potential and distribution transformers are lethal, so please use extreme caution when working with them.

  [31k] Wild Bill Emery and his first look at Richard Hull's magnifier #11-E. The extra coil is that little green coil above Bill's head. It is only 4 inches in diameter and 12 inches long, and has made sparks in excess of 10 feet with only about 7 kVA input. Richard believes in large toroids, which you can see here dwarfing the tiny extra coil.

Close-up view of the extra coil and the toroids. Richard has hung the coil and toroids from the ceiling of his lab, and mounted the driver on the wall. His magnifier system takes up zero floor space.

 [21k] Richard Hull's eight-point series quenched spark gap for magnifier work.

 [20k] These are Richard Hull's NWL custom-made impulse capacitors. Very high voltage ratings like these have will cost you really big bucks - but they work extremely well, and are very unlikely to ever fail.

[27k] Details of the magnifier primary. Note the top-down connections which maximize coupling, and the very heavy polyethylene insulation between the primary and secondary. Also note the copper tubing is near the ground end of the system, to reduce likelihood of arcs.

[26k] The original rotary spark gap from the Nemesis Tesla coil.

[33k] Bert Pool and Alex Tajnsek with two 34.5 kV potential transformers which Bert hauled back to Texas.

[34k] Alex and Wild Bill connect transformers so they can be tested under working conditions.

[20k] "Austin" (last name unknown) from Berkley, CA, who has built a Faraday-shield suit out of heating and air-conditioning ductwork that withstands 20+ foot arcs from Greg Leyh's monster coil.

[14k] Another view of Austin in his robot suit.

 

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