~j0ule

You don't need lots of money to make high voltage capacitors, in fact some pretty decent ones can be made with some cheap and readily available materials. This is because capacitors are very simple devices consisting only of a dielectric and two plat

Humans of the internet, I present to you the BlitzenKlavier (lightning-piano). It’s a large solid-state Tesla coil that takes in 120VAC, MIDI, and spits out 8 foot musical lightning bolts! [img]../storage/fragment_images/42879498820102740_cd3fac28b4

I’ve always wanted to make one of these, but never got around to it until recently. However, after finding the most adorable tiny flyback in a 5 inch TV, I felt it needed a good job. I tried a few different circuits to make a plasma speaker, but both

Disposable cameras are a great source of moderately high voltage inverters. The flash circuit takes 1.5V and turns it into anywhere from 300 to 350 volts, and what's nice about these cameras is that you can go to any pharmacy, and if you ask nicely,

A "ZVS driver" is a self resonant oscillator; a very simple circuit that can oscillate a large amount of power with little loss. It is normally used for making the sine wave needed for driving high frequency transformers such as those found in L

The microwave oven transformer is possibly one of the simplest methods of making some big high voltage arcs, mainly because they are robust, cheap, and easy to hook up.[img]../storage/fragment_images/79114536969562370_d47432c45ed03f967dbf1445f547852c.jpg[

So here's the story: I ended up getting 8 fancy high voltage capacitors in a trade with @inducktion, and they ended up sitting on my shelf for about a month. A couple weeks later I came across a reel of 5000 glass 1kV ultrafast diodes on ebay, and af

I've seen multiple designs for a plasma speaker online, and quite frankly most of them are not very good. Some problems I noticed were constantly blowing up MOSFETs, distorted audio, excessive heating of the MOSFET(s) etc. I was shown a nice circ

Transformers are not the only way one can boost voltage; another method to the madness is a Cockroft-Walton multiplier, or thes the Villard Cascade depending on your favorite dead scientist. “CWs”, as they are colloquially known, are a charge pump use

After their invention by Benjamin Franklin, Franklin’s bells became a novelty in the late 1700s. One bell would be connected to a stake in the ground while the other would be connected to a lightning rod, and a conductive clapper would be put in between

Also referred to a Line Output Transformer, the flyback transformer is a high frequency, high voltage transformer most often used to power cathode ray tubes. Flybacks are capable of generating some decently high voltages, typically anywhere from 10 to 35k