Robert W. Stephen's

Robert W. Stephens stands next to his developmental 7 kVA hobby Tesla coil. This unit stands 107 inches tall and all components required for operation except the outboard 230V, 23 A. variac are located in the base. Topload is 14-1/2" cross-section x 54" in diameter. The HV resonator is #18 AWG PVC covered stranded copper wire close wound on a 15 inch green PVC sewer pipe form coated with Glyptal red varnish. The ends are baffled shut and the interior is pressurized with dielectric insulating gas to +1.5 PSI. The HDPE rings are hot glued carefully with no pinholes to the O.D. of the resonator winding to increase the creepage path over the ouside of the resonator. This treatment completely eliminated troublesome and damaging end-to-end resonator flashovers from overvoltage. Primary is a flat spiral of 1" x 0.100" copper ribbon. Tank cap is 0.12 uF at 40 kV by Maxwell. Fo=80 kHz. K~=0.20. 4 gap tungsten rotary break @ 400 BPS. Power xfmer 12,000 VRMS.