At some point on Bill’s travels through the internet, he discovered the Tiny Tesla. He was intrigued by the idea and thought it would be fun to build one with Mason. A tesla coil is a form of induction coil for producing high-frequency alternating current. It uses a simple spark gap (a spark that jumps between two conductors) to excite oscillations in the tuned transformer. The kit that Bill bought is a musical kit. When it’s completed, shoots four inch sparks, plays music and wirelessly excites fluorescent tubes. Our kit came with two mother boards, all the resistors and capacitors, diodes, IGBT, fiber optic cable and the core which was already coiled. All in all, there were close to 40 – 50 components and the project required more than 100 points to solder.
They started soldering on February 7th, 2016.
March 6, 2016 was another Tesla day. Bill and Mason worked on it slow and steady over two months time. They wanted to get it up and running for a 4-H demonstration. What we learned is that this project is not for the faint of heart.
That tiny Tesla burned out often and they had to reorder a number of parts. One time, they got it to work properly and that was a triumphant day. Unfortunately, that was not the time I was recording. Mason said it was fun when the music played but it broke so much.
Mason did end up taking the Tesla coil to his 4-H meeting tonight to do a demonstration because even though he was not able to show them a working coil, he could share what he knew. This project taught Mason a tremendous amount about troubleshooting with a circuit board because each time it broke they had to test all the parts, desolder that component and then solder a replacement.
Some day Bill would like to revisit the Tesla coil but for now it is resting in a place of honor in time out.
This is so like when Matthew was Michael Farady in 4th grade and he and Ken made a Faraday generator…..the working of the machine was inconsistent at best, but it made a great prop for his speech.
Such a wonderful learning experience