Jacobs Ladder

This is an electronic Jacobs Ladder, not a microwave oven / neon sign transformer one. It uses a dual igbt half bridge driving two 12 kV transformers in anti-phase. The result is 24 kV output at 0.25 amps. This gives 6 kW of peak electrical power at 20 kHz frequency. The theory of the jacobs ladder is that the high temperature gass rises due to its buoyancy and because of convection currents, this carries the arc upwards until the voltage reaches the powersupply maximum or the end of the electrodes are reached. Either way the arc extinguishes and the high electrode voltage is enough to start another arc where the electrodes are closest at the bottom of the ladder.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• arc
• plasma
• electrode
• igbt
• inverter
• high
• voltage
• transformer
• power
• electronic
• spark
• electrical
• sodium
• diy
• electronics
• gadget

[ablublibleblu]

wow men very cool. so, i can do that with a microwave oven transformer???????????

[kimladha]

correction- you can do this with 6 microwave oven transformers. Atleast untill the insulation breaks down or they overheat! Thanks though.

[jmartis2]

Ok just one more question, did you use any kind of resonant driver or just plain hard switching?

[kimladha]

no resonance. just a conventional half bridge driving a current limited transformer. Output is 25 kV opencircuit.

[kimladha]

i was given the transformers cores, not sure where you can get them from. Everything else is home made from parts.

[juniortore]

so that is what happens when you power a nst with a high frequency

[kaboooom2000uk]

looks like a good setup, would you share your circuit for the inverter?

[ShokaLion]

Very nicely done. Only trouble with having such a high frequency circuit is you don't get the classic 60hz bzzzzt-bzzzt-bzzzt sound.

Very well done.

[ablublibleblu]

no with 10 is impresionant

but 10.000W is a lot of power

[mrpee1pee2]

cool new vid kim.

surely this machine could melt people?

[jmartis2]

nice