While researching solid state Tesla coils we stumbled across this old project. As you have probably guessed from the pictures, this coil is meant to actually play music. Knowing how to add eye catching flare, the coiler uses a Plexiglas frame turned light pipe; only to be complimented by an audio amplifier complete with graphic equalizer. There is a video of the coil in action on YouTube. We have covered singing tesla coils in the past. Other twists on the classics include the tesla coil guitar amp and a hand held plasm gun.
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Solid state tesla coil
Automotive
The Suspension System On A Car Explained
"Suspension," when discussing cars, refers to the use of frontand rear springs to suspend a vehicle’s "sprung" weight. Thesprings used on today’s cars and trucks are constructed in avariety of types, shapes, sizes, rates, and capacities. Typesinclude leaf springs, coil springs, air springs, and torsionbars. These are used in sets of four for each vehicle, or theymay be paired off in various combinations and are attached byseveral different mounting techniques. The suspension systemalso includes shocks andor struts, and sway bars. Back in theearliest days of automobile development, when most of the car’sweight including the engine was on the rear axle,…
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AVR boost converter
Over at SpriteMods, [sprite_tm] realized that a microcontroller could be used as a boost converter to power itself. A boost converter steps up voltage from a battery by switching the output of a coil. First, it is tied to ground so a magnetic field can build up in the coil. It is then released as a higher voltage than the input. Normally dedicated chips do this at an incredibly high frequency, but the PWM signal from an AVR works well enough. This can be used in low-power situations where space is an issue.
[via EMSL]
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AVR RFID tag
[pc486] sent in his hack that uses an ATtiny85 to act like an EM4102, a chip used for RFID tags. Minimally, all that is needed is the AVR and a coil, but he recommends some filtering capacitors. Depending on the size of the coil, different frequencies and ranges can be achieved. This project actually includes several hacks, such as using the coil for not only power, but a clock signal. The coil is actually able to power the chip without being connected to the power pins due to clamping diodes on the connected pins. The firmware is short but…
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Induction furnace
[Tim Williams] made his own induction furnace. A copper tubing coil forms the primary winding, as the material to be heated becomes the short circuited secondary. The load material is subject to high power magnetic fields operating at radio frequency. The rapidly changing field induces current flow within the material, creating a great deal of heat. The brute power required a cooling system to match. In the video below, the induction furnace can be seen melting common table salt.
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Homemade toroid winder
[eclipsed78], built an automatic toroid winder. The drum splits in order to load the toroid. Then wire is wound on the drum, much like any other coil would be wound. The drum rotates as a slider pulls the wire off the drum, while revolving in and out of the toroid. A side tension keeps the slack out of the wire during operation. The winding coil is stepped as the drum rotates, in order to control the turns ratio. [eclipsed78] created a stepper driver from a schematic, so he could drive the motors. You can watch the winder in operation …
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Bolt-action coil gun
TechEBlog has posted a few pictures of a student constructed coil gun. It’s bolt-action and includes a six round magazine. The gun only has a single stage to accelerate the projectile. While not as impressive as the portable coil pistol, it’s still more fun than most shop projects we’ve seen. You can find a video of the device below.
[via Gizmodo]
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Portable coil pistol
[Daniel] had to have runaway in his mind when he built this coil gun. It’s hand held, holds 14 42 gram rounds and can propel them at speeds of 110km/h. Of course when it is battery powered, you have a 90 second warm up time between shots. It can also be used while plugged into a wall socket, which reduces the charge time to roughly 3 seconds. Great job [Daniel].
[via engadget]
