Kyle Mcallister wrote: > Hi, > > Okay, as per Horace's suggestion, made a crude > spherical (er...kind of spherical) terminal out of two > mixing bowls. Didn't go to WalMart, as that place > frightens me, so I got them from Kmart. Duct taped > them together at the seams, so as to make a crude > corona seal. It works very well, actually. Fed by the > HV terminal (negative WRT ground in this supply), it > charges up with little leakage. Will jump a 2-3" gap > to a flat metal plate. Sparks are intense, almost pure > white with tinges of blue. Very loud, like a .22cal > firing. > > !!! This power supply is not a toy !!! > > Power supply is a 6 stage (or 3 depending on how you > look at it) full-wave Cockroft-Walton multiplier. > Input is 10kV 23mA from a 'liberated' oil burner > ignition transformer. Capacitors are .009uF each. > Ground (0V) is to the center tap of the HV winding of > the transformer, common to the center input of the > multiplier stack, common to house ground,
I'm curious -- why is common grounded? Seems like a hand placed too near it would reward you with holes blown through the soles of your shoes as a result, no? Wouldn't it be safer to let the hot parts of the rig float? NB -- If the answer to this is, "Because that's how the experiment works, stupid -- didn't you read the paper?" then I confess in advance that, no, I don't think I did, and I'm not even sure where this is written up. A link would be appreciated (and I realize the info is surely already in the Vortex archives but, well, another post of a link would still be appreciated).
