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Thread: High Voltage Incidents & Effects, cool

  1. #1
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    Cool High Voltage Incidents & Effects, cool

    Just slightly off topic but a lot of lasers use high voltage power supplies and you can be exposed to lethal conditions If you don't know what you're doing.

    I've sold a lot of high voltage components to many experimenters, pros and Engineers who like to tinker with sparks and arcs.
    One of those Engineers is Bert Hickman, now retired but still active.
    Checkout a section of his web site at
    " http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm#Blowup " for eye opening incidents and effects of high voltage.

    Rick :-)
    Profile Redacted by Admin @ 04.24.2010

  2. #2
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    The coolest incident I saw happened way back when I was in high school. We were at football practice and the kicker was practicing field goals. Directly behind the field goal was a street and a row of houses. The kicker kicked one ball and it went right between the uprights, across the street, and struck a top power line. It knocked the powerline down and close enough to the lower power line that there was a big arc and then the wire started bouncing up and down and there were sparks flying all the way down the length of the power line between the two telephone poles at each end of the block. It eventually caused the power to be knocked out after a few seconds of that. Then, some old lady came out of her house and stood on her front porch and yelled, "WHOEVER BLEW THE DAMN POWER OUT BETTER FIX IT RIGHT NOW!!!" I never laughed so hard in all my life.

  3. #3
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    KVANT Australian projector sales
    https://www.facebook.com/kvantaus/

    Lasershowparts- Laser Parts at great prices
    https://www.facebook.com/lasershowparts/

  4. #4
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    Cool 14 million volts and 50 foot streamers from tesla coil

    Here's a link to another Tesla coil proffessional I sold high voltage parts so he can build monsters like this . See " http://www.ttr.com/model13.html "
    Bill Wysock's latest monster.
    *** 14 million volts and 50 foot artificial lightning ***

    Rick
    Profile Redacted by Admin @ 04.24.2010

  5. #5
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    I wonder if that sucker would have enough omph to light the tube in my non-functional HGM 5 laser....

    Adam

  6. #6
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    Wow, those Tesla Coils are something else! When I was a kid I made one that would put out about 8" sparks but that is a long way from those suckers.

  7. #7
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    I thought that guy was actually standing there at first...

  8. #8
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    Bill used the same trick that Nikola Tesla did when he took photos of his coils in action, double exposure :-)

    I would love to have witnessed the 100 foot bolts of artificial lightning during Tesla's Colorado experiments.

    Rick :-)
    Profile Redacted by Admin @ 04.24.2010

  9. #9
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    If you could take all that lightning, bounce it in to a resonator cavity, collimate it,-- what a beam! a plasma laser! or..
    a Plaser

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by LaserLover View Post

    I've sold a lot of high voltage components to many experimenters, pros and Engineers who like to tinker with sparks and arcs.

    Rick :-)
    Rick, perhaps you can guide me as I build up my CO2 laser. I have all the parts, (using one of those Chinese sealed CO2 tubes) but am a little unsure about my plan for connecting the HV wiring to the tube.

    I bought some MillMax contacts that grip the tube electrodes nicely. My plan was to solder the HV wires to these contacts, and then encapsulate them in some kind of insulating compound.. maybe RTV. (I don't actually know how to do that..yet ;-).

    Is this a really stupid idea, or am I on the right track? Is there a proper connector I can buy that would be better? (The other end of the cable is terminated with an Alden connector, so that's OK).

    Neil

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