- #1
Opus_723
- 178
- 3
On several occasions, I've seen the demonstration where a person holds a fluorescent light bulb up to a tesla coil, and it illuminates. And in general, demonstrators don't seem too worried by the sparks generated. But I was looking at this page,
http://www.pupman.com/safety.htm
and was surprised to see the following:
Which frankly makes me scared to go near one, and makes me wonder if these people even know what they're doing.
So, question: Is it possible to design tesla coils that do not have this problem, or to perform the above "tricks" safely, or do I need to tackle the next guy who tries to do that trick in order to save his life?
http://www.pupman.com/safety.htm
and was surprised to see the following:
You are literally playing Russian Roulette when you stick a hand held metal rod into the output streamer of your coil running at 3kvA, while standing on a concrete floor! When you start running these kind of power levels (or even less) some coils have a tendency to form a corona or even send a streamer down to their own primaries every once in a while. A grounded strike ring is often added around the primary to try to prevent this self striking streamer from hitting the primary coil and thus introducing a high voltage pulse into the 'bottom end electronics' where it could do damage to components. These strike rails are not 100% effective. The streamer can still, and sometimes does strike a point downstairs that is part of the LETHAL high voltage 60 Hz circuitry. When such a contact is made, any person also connected to a corona/streamer link to the secondary at the same time will, via the ionized air path, become connected to lethal 60 Hz mains current. You could try the trick you described standing on the cement floor in your tennis shoes half a dozen times and live, or be killed the very next time you try it. The fact that the bottom of your secondary is tied to ground will not save you!
Which frankly makes me scared to go near one, and makes me wonder if these people even know what they're doing.
So, question: Is it possible to design tesla coils that do not have this problem, or to perform the above "tricks" safely, or do I need to tackle the next guy who tries to do that trick in order to save his life?