Bell Jar

[Electroboom] always has some entertaining videos. He recently tried to run his Tesla coil in a vacuum. The video shows some interesting results, along with his usual bleeped out expletives as he drills into his hand and suffers other indignities in the name of electronics.

Unfortunately, a bit of extra bolt caused the coil to arc internally, eventually leading to the impressive device shuffling off its mortal… um, well, let’s just say its untimely demise. Along the way, though, you get to see some interesting techniques for building a silicone seal for the vacuum chamber, and some neat Tesla coil tricks with a closed off syringe.

Continue reading “That Sucks! Death Of A Tesla Coil” →

[Tim] wrote in to tell us about his Mark III hard drive in a bell jar, and we were quite impressed! The principle of using a bell jar to protect the hard drive inside so the world can see it spinning is really a cool idea, but his execution of this project is excellent. It was reportedly so good that an unnamed college actually asked him to build one of his drive displays for them.

The Mark III is an excellent build, and the little hard drive has been swapped to the front of it for better visualisation. The disadvantage of the iPod Mini used for the Mark III build is that it actually buffers enough so that the read head doesn’t have to spin during the entire song. Because of this, we thought that his first build, nicknamed [pink], was even more interesting, if ever so slightly less refined. By many of our hacking standards though, both are incredibly finished works of art!

Both these builds feature a plethora of LEDs to keep you entertained, and can be seen demonstrated after the break! Continue reading “A “Jukebox” In A Bell Jar” →