I really love the high voltage projects Jay shows on Plasma Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/PlasmaChannel ). While it is sometimes difficult to replicate some of his designs they still provide excellent ideas and inspiration.

Since I am frequently inspired by the content he produces I always keep my eye out for new projects he posts and that is how I came across his build of an arc lighter powered spark gap Tesla Coil.

In attempting to replicate his build of an arc lighter powered spark gap Tesla Coil I ended up encountering a few Issues – the main one being that calculations based on his design didn’t seem to work out right.  In addition, missing information made it even more difficult to replicate:

• top-load (what was used was some sort of drawer pull - no actual dimensions given).
  • no specifics on the distance from the top-load to the secondary coil windings
  • no estimated capacitance of top-load
• no information on coupling between the primary and secondary coils or even just the distance between the 2 coil forms

I did attempt to work around these issues since he did provide the capacitance of the primary tank circuit (capacitor bank) and the inductance of the secondary circuit (coil form dimensions including height of windings and wire gauge).

In the end I designed a new coil based on the secondary coil geometry and the primary capacitance from Plasma Channels design since I had already made these 2 elements.  I also used the same High Voltage diodes that he listed except that I changed that portion of his power supply from a single diode rectifier to a full bridge rectifier (in the hopes of increasing power to the primary coil).

To check all calculation's and optimize the design I used JavaTC.