Adjustable Tesla coil build

This coil has no trouble shooting sparks across four meters of empty air. [Finn Hammer] has been putting in some long hours on this labor of love, and we put in some time reading through his progress thread. He started down this path about a year ago and every step of the way he produces beautiful work. We enjoy … Read the rest

Wireless electricity

[Eric Giler] has a talk available over at TED that discusses and demos delivering electricity without wires. Called WiTricity, these methods were developed by a team at MIT a few years ago who were working off of the concepts of Nicolai Tesla. The facts shared about our current energy delivery system are a bit shocking; we’ve spent over … Read the rest

Solid state tesla coil

pano

While researching solid state Tesla coils we stumbled across this old project. As you have probably guessed from the pictures, this coil is meant to actually play music. Knowing how to add eye catching flare, the coiler uses a Plexiglas frame turned light pipe; only to be complimented by an audio amplifier complete with graphic equalizer. There is a … Read the rest

Jacob’s Ladder

jacobs_ladder

[jandgse812] shows us how to build a Jacob’s Ladder from mostly household parts.   The bulk of the instructions for this project are included in the downloadable document, there is a downloadable video as well. Be sure to follow to the end where he shows us a much safer and possibly better looking revision. The Jacob’s Ladder has become standard fair … Read the rest

900,000 volts at your fingertips

van_de_graaff

[Nickademuss] has put together these great instructions on how to build a 900,000 volt Van De Graaff generator. For those unfamiliar, Van De Graaff generators produce massive amounts of static electricity. They are usually the things you see in science centers that make people’s hair stand on end. [Nickademuss] put a lot of effort into this, he created 3D … Read the rest

TIME’s Best Inventions of 2008

tesla

Attempting to put our past behind us as quickly as possible, TIME has released what they feel are the best inventions of 2008. While there’s some pretty wishy-washy lab-only stuff on the list, we’re glad to see a lot of cool hardware made the cut. Some of our favorites are: The Tesla roadster proving electric cars can be fun. … Read the rest

Tesla coil tuner


Here’s one more use for the insanely handy LM555 chips. [Terry] put together a Tesla coil tuner around one. The 555 is used to generate a range of frequencies while a simple double LED arrangement indicates the presence of an output spike from a coil due to the resonance.… Read the rest