High Voltage Generator

Each coil pack has two secondary windings of equal turn ratio. To double output voltage, I wire these windings in series (I know this is horribly damaging to the coil pack, but I have yet to encounter a failure due to this). 

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I tested a singular coil pack in a flyback configuration with a power MOSFET and a signal generator. I found that the optimal frequency for the largest, most consistent arcs was about 1000Hz to 900Hz with a duty cycle of ~85%. I cooled the MOSFET in antifreeze, which I found out is unfortunately slightly conductive. I worked around this by only submerging the heatsink portion of the FET.

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However, I was getting stray arcs to other parts of my circuit that would ruin the operation of generator. To solve this, I created my own high voltage insulation by taking a rubber insulated wire, running it through PVC tubing that fit the diameter of the wire snugly. I then ran this through PVC tubing of a larger diameter. This improved my arcing problem.

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I assembled the generator by wiring the primary windings of three coil packs in parallel and the secondary windings in series. This produced ~500kV at around 500Hz, 10% duty cycle.

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I also created a high voltage multiplier reaching peaks of about 800kV. I used high voltage diodes in series (I am neglecting the effects of varying diode response times, but I am aware of it) and Leyden jars to act as high voltage capacitors. I am not able to find footage of this setup, however, I will be redoing this experiment in the future with more video.