On the Internet there are many circuits for obtaining high voltage at home - on line machines, on MOTs from a microwave, Tesla coils, etc. However, the simplest method is based on a horizontal scanning transformer of a TV and a transistor. The transformer can be torn out from an old tube b/w TV.

The simplest circuit was found - a line reader, a powerful bipolar transistor, 2 resistors. This is a blocking oscillator assembled on a transistor. It practically does not need adjustment - everything should work right away.

Let's start creating a homemade high voltage generator. Having carefully disassembled the liner, I remove the kenotron panel and the primary windings, biting off the contact group with pliers:

I leave a secondary high-voltage winding, consisting of many turns of thin wire, a ferrite core, a housing, and a contact group. I wind my windings with enameled copper wire onto the body of the contact group: First: 7 turns approximately 1 mm in diameter. Second: 3 turns approximately 1.5 mm.

I wound the windings in one direction and soldered the ends to the contact group. The top was secured and insulated with electrical tape. I'm assembling the line in reverse order. In general, the thickness and number of turns can be varied. I did what was at hand. The length of the discharge is, in total, about 3 centimeters.

I conducted many experiments and discovered many interesting things: One wire is grounded to the battery, the second is connected to a regular light bulb. The argon with which it is filled is ionized inside, creating beautiful effects. You can also take it with your hands - the ionization is even stronger.

The discharge can be caught on a metal object while holding it in your hand. Because The generator frequency is high - a skin effect occurs, i.e. the current passes along the surface of the skin without touching the nerve endings, so there should be no pain. You cannot catch the discharge directly on the skin - you can get burned. Without thinking twice, he took the tweezers in his hand and stuck it to the free electrode of the generator. The second one is grounded to the battery. There was a discharge and severe pain in my hand: I received a fairly powerful electric shock. I did not repeat the experiment - it was very unpleasant. I measured the consumed “idle current” - without discharge, about 2 A at a voltage of 12 V. This is about 25 Watts of power consumption. If there is a discharge, the consumption changes slightly.

A diagram of a simple modification of an ATX power supply so that it can be used as a car battery charger.

Tutorial

Good afternoon, dear Khabrovsk residents.
This post will be a little unusual.
In it I will tell you how to make a simple and fairly powerful high-voltage generator (280,000 volts). I took the Marx Generator circuit as a basis. The peculiarity of my scheme is that I recalculated it for accessible and inexpensive parts. In addition, the circuit itself is easy to repeat (it took me 15 minutes to assemble it), does not require configuration and starts the first time. In my opinion, it is much simpler than a Tesla transformer or a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier.

Principle of operation

Immediately after switching on, the capacitors begin to charge. In my case, up to 35 kilovolts. As soon as the voltage reaches the breakdown threshold of one of the arresters, the capacitors through the arrester will be connected in series, which will lead to a doubling of the voltage on the capacitors connected to this arrester. Because of this, the remaining spark gaps are triggered almost instantly, and the voltage on the capacitors adds up. I used 12 steps, which means the voltage should be multiplied by 12 (12 x 35 = 420). 420 kilovolts are almost half-meter discharges. But in practice, taking into account all the losses, the resulting discharges were 28 cm long. The losses were due to corona discharges.

About details:

The circuit itself is simple, consisting of capacitors, resistors and arresters. You will also need a power source. Since all the parts are high-voltage, the question arises, where to get them? Now, first things first:

1 - resistors

Resistors needed are 100 kOhm, 5 watt, 50,000 volt.
I tried many factory resistors, but none could withstand such voltage - the arc would break through the top of the case and nothing would work. Careful googling yielded an unexpected answer: the craftsmen who assembled the Marx generator for voltages of more than 100,000 volts used complex liquid resistors, the Marx generator on liquid resistors, or used a lot of stages. I wanted something simpler and made resistors from wood.

I broke off two even branches of a damp tree on the street (dry ones do not conduct current) and turned on the first branch instead of a group of resistors to the right of the capacitors, the second branch instead of a group of resistors to the left of the capacitors. It turned out to be two branches with many conclusions at equal distances. I made conclusions by winding bare wire over branches. Experience shows that such resistors can withstand voltages of tens of megavolts (10,000,000 volts)

2 - capacitors

Everything is simpler here. I took capacitors that were the cheapest on the radio market - K15-4, 470 pF, 30 kV (aka greensheets). They were used in tube TVs, so now you can buy them at a disassembly site or ask for them for free. They withstand a voltage of 35 kilovolts well, not a single one has broken through.

3 - power supply

I just couldn’t bring myself to assemble a separate circuit to power my Marx generator. Because the other day my neighbor gave me an old TV “Electron TC-451”. The anode of the kinescope in color televisions uses a constant voltage of about 27,000 volts. I disconnected the high-voltage wire (suction cup) from the anode of the kinescope and decided to check what kind of arc would be produced from this voltage.

Having played a lot with the arc, I came to the conclusion that the circuit in the TV is quite stable, can easily withstand overloads, and in the event of a short circuit, the protection is triggered and nothing burns out. The circuit in the TV has a power reserve and I managed to overclock it from 27 to 35 kilovolts. To do this, I twisted the R2 trimmer in the TV power module so that the horizontal power supply rose from 125 to 150 volts, which in turn led to an increase in the anode voltage to 35 kilovolts. When you try to increase the voltage even more, the KT838A transistor breaks through in the horizontal scan of the TV, so you need to not overdo it.

Build process

Using copper wire, I screwed the capacitors to tree branches. There must be a distance of 37 mm between the capacitors, otherwise an unwanted breakdown may occur. I bent the free ends of the wire so that there was 30 mm between them - these will be the arresters.

It's better to see once than to hear 100 times. Watch the video where I showed in detail the assembly process and operation of the generator:

Safety precautions

Particular care must be taken, since the circuit operates at a constant voltage and a discharge from even one capacitor will most likely be fatal. When turning on the circuit, you need to be at a sufficient distance because electricity penetrates 20 cm or even more through the air. After each shutdown, you must always discharge all capacitors (even those in the TV) with a well-grounded wire.

It is better to remove all electronics from the room where the experiments will be carried out. The discharges create powerful electromagnetic pulses. The phone, keyboard and monitor that are shown in my video are out of order and can no longer be repaired! Even in the next room my gas boiler turned off.

You need to protect your hearing. The noise from the discharges is similar to gunshots, then it makes your ears ring.

The first thing you feel when you turn it on is how the air in the room is electrified. The electric field intensity is so high that it is felt by every hair of the body.

The corona discharge is clearly visible. Beautiful bluish glow around parts and wires.
There is always a slight electric shock, sometimes you don’t even understand why: you touched the door - a spark jumped, you wanted to take the scissors - the scissors shot. In the dark, I noticed that sparks were jumping between various metal objects not connected with the generator: in a briefcase with a tool, sparks were jumping between screwdrivers, pliers, and a soldering iron.

The lights light up on their own, without wires.

The whole house smells like ozone, like after a thunderstorm.

Conclusion

All parts will cost about 50 UAH ($5), this is an old TV and capacitors. Now I am developing a fundamentally new scheme with the goal of obtaining meter discharges without any special costs. You ask: what is the application of this scheme? I will answer that there are applications, but they need to be discussed in another topic.

That's all for me, be careful when working with high voltage.

Everyone knows that in the original the Tesla resonant transformer was made on a lamp, but with the development of electronics it became possible to significantly reduce and simplify the size of this device if, instead of a lamp, a conventional bipolar transistor of the KT819 type or another similar in current and power was used. Of course, with a field-effect transistor the results will be even better, but this circuit is designed for those who are taking their first steps in assembling high-voltage generators. The schematic diagram of the device is shown in the figure:

The communication and collector coils are wound with 0.5-0.8 mm wire. For a high-voltage coil we take any wire with a thickness of 0.15-0.3 mm and approximately 1000 turns. At the “hot” end of the high-voltage winding we place such a spiral - everything is like in a real Tesla. In my version, I took power from a 10V 1A transformer.

Of course, with a power supply of 24V and higher, the length of the corona discharge will increase significantly. After the secondary winding there is a rectifier and a 1000uF 25V capacitor. The transistor for the generator was used KT805IM. for the diagram in the archive.

And now a photo of the finished design and the discharge itself:

February 20, 2014 at 6:27 pm

Dangerous fun: an easy-to-replicate high voltage generator

DIY or Do It Yourself

Tutorial

Principle of operation

About details:

1 - resistors

2 - capacitors

3 - power supply

Build process

It's better to see once than to hear 100 times. Watch the video where I showed in detail the assembly process and operation of the generator:

Safety precautions

You need to protect your hearing. The noise from the discharges is similar to gunshots, then it makes your ears ring.

The first thing you feel when you turn it on is how the air in the room is electrified. The electric field intensity is so high that it is felt by every hair of the body.

The lights light up on their own, without wires.

The whole house smells like ozone, like after a thunderstorm.

Conclusion

That's all for me, be careful when working with high voltage.

Hello. Today we will talk about a very powerful and cool homemade product. Today I will assemble a powerful high-voltage generator with a voltage of about 25 kV. This is not the first time I have assembled this circuit, so there are no difficulties. I will try to explain everything briefly and simply
I'll start with the circuit of a high-voltage generator. I found it when I was collecting it, and I kept it just in case. A circuit of only a dozen components
As I said, I assembled the circuit for the second oscillator, the circuit now works successfully in welding. The lower board is the high-voltage generator

While assembling, I managed to play around with an arc sometimes reaching 3 centimeters, which was equal to approximately 30 kV. Even then I decided to build the same generator for myself, I just had to assemble the suitable components and now the time has come

I found a Soviet-made color TV and tore out the line scan board from it.

Actually, from this board you only need a line transformer and a capacitor k73-17 at 400V 0.47 µF. I had a pair of them on my first generator.
I cleaned the board of old tracks with a grinder, installed a line transformer in the old place by winding two windings of 5 turns each. I made a choke from the same transformer, which I will remake a little later.

I started assembling the control part of the circuit. The installation will be hinged, I don’t want to bother with the board. Installed field effect transistors 40N60 on the radiator, through insulating gaskets

At the next stage of assembly, I soldered powerful three-amp Schottky diodes

All you have to do is solder a capacitor between the drains of the transistors and solder 390 Ohm resistors into the gates. I didn’t install zener diodes, since I don’t have them, but the circuit works fine without them

I soldered the transformer to the drains and rewound the inductor, since the inductance of the previous one was too small. New choke with inductance 50 μH.

It's time to try starting the high-voltage generator. I connect the board to . In the photo, the arc is about half a centimeter, which is equal to 5 kV. Power supply 20V

I tried to expand the arc to 2.5 cm, the voltage rose to 25 kV. The arc became wide and powerful, lighting a cigarette in a split second :) But the wire began to melt and I had to interrupt the experiment

To prevent the wires from burning, one terminal of the high-voltage winding was connected to a self-tapping screw screwed into the board, and a bolt was screwed onto the second.
Power supplied 20V, no-load current 0.6A

Now I’ll try to ignite the arc to 25 kV and take measurements. The voltage dropped to 13.2V, current consumption 6.25A. Power consumption is 82.5 W, the pencil lights up without any problems at all

Unfortunately, my laboratory cannot ignite the arc stronger and so the transformer is overloaded. We need to find something more powerful and see what else a high-voltage generator is capable of.
I made a short video of the generator in action, I hope you find it interesting.