Mini Tesla Coil Kit
2021-02-10 21:12 - Making
Stuck at home so much, my habits have shifted a bit. I haven't made much of anything in quite a while. I dropped a whole three dollars (shipped!) on a little mini tesla coil kit just to shake things up a bit. Here's how it arrived, no instructions at all, which worried me at first. But there's very few parts, and it's actually almost impossible to get them wrong. Turns out they're tiny, but the markings right on the board disambiguate everything.
Weird parts: it came with two resistors and two LEDs — and the description called this out specifically — but there's only one place to put each, same for the little capacitors: comes with two but only one spot to put one in. It came with four little feet, but there's only three spots to put them. The component nearest the middle of this shot is a neon lamp, which doesn't connect to anything at all!
It only took a little while to assemble. Here it is in operation, hooked up to my bench power supply so I could vary, limit, and monitor the power it consumed. It claimed to need 9 to 12 volts, and it works across that range and below. It doesn't actually do very much, but it does cause quite an electric field to be established. As a result, the little neon lamp it comes with will illuminate when it's nearby and the coil is powered on. But not connected at all! Spooky!
To rather dimly illuminate this small bulb, it consumes around six watts. And the little heat sink gets quite hot!
