500,000 Volt Lightning Tower

Have you tried conductive PLA for a top load? Built a VDG with this, bottom toroidal and the top half a hemisphere. Had to print in 4 segments for a 13" top collector but worked beautifully. Going to do a toroidal top load for a VTTC I'm finishing this month. Great project! Maybe equipotential rings on the outside at 6" intervals may help, printed these also with conductive PLA for my VDG with 13" dia collector. I was surprised at how well this machine works, the toroidal bottom half and spherical top half works better than spheres I've printed as there's a soft curve wrapping into itself at the top of the tube. Will post a vid. at some point titled "Having fun with conductive PLA" or something like that. As an aside, these conductive plastics aren't so great for low voltage apps but doesn't seem to matter at electrostatic voltages. Keep the great stuff coming, never would have occurred to me to build this!

Bro got the ksp music

Loving your high voltage videos! Would you mind sharing your 3D print files on thingiverse or elsewhere?

Sir just use oil for insulation of the transformer ... it is easy .. reliable and cheap...

try filling with cement xD

Oh this will be a fun build

I have a question.
Why are there tons of resistors in the end of the multiplier? The multiplier gives a good amount of high voltage right?

la boule métallique tenu au bout d'une perche en plastique doit être relié à la terre par le fil électrique qui y est attaché !!!

Nice work. Adding a ton of stages to a multiplier should work in theory. For 500kv, u should expect to see 50 centimeter arcs / 0.5 meters at the very least considering the dielectric breakdown of air. Adding a lot of stages doesn't help to increase the voltage like you might think because of a few reasons:
As more stages are added, the voltage across each individual stage is decreased.
The reactances of all your capacitors are going to add up which is going to weaken the arcs a lot
And a big reason is because real world capacitors all have some leakage current within them that drains itself slightly. This results in voltage being lower on top of the fact that the voltage across each stage is less with more added within the multiplier.

this is not even close to 500kv it looks like it can jump about 10cm so its about 100kv and you dont need top load with multiplyer it just disipates the charge. its not a tesla coil. btw ive built a tesla coil capable of about 2 meters smarks playing music.... and there is no radiation, this is misleading. the bigger hazard is breathing ozone, but you would need a lot of run time to make it an actual danger.

If I can make a suggestion, instead of a wire for turning on, use a pneumatic switch. Then no potential arc back.

If you see corona, the insulation is breaking down. It's just a matter of time before it's completely useless.

Use an oil bath instead of epoxy.

Exelente job..👍🇲🇽😀🇺🇲👍

I find this video very interesting. Instead of searching for a flyback, next time search for a horizontal output transformer. In the days of tubes the rectification was by a tube like a 1BG3T. Thanks for your content!

Current limiting shouldn't be necessary to protect the diodes. Once the caps have discharged the arc extinguishes until they recharge.

Hey nice video! 😃👍 But What type of filament were you using for your 3D printer? And what is the coloring of the Gray filament made off?! Because This could also effect your insolation right?!

that fault happen bcz your wound winding is not clasified for high voltage laquer insulation thats why it has corona discharging around the wire and voltage jumpers

Question, the air is ionized and that what gives the electron a way to jump out.
What will happen if it will be in vacuum?

A sphere on top is actually better than aToroid
And for the best insulation I put the whole thing inside a PVC drain tube

You deserve to turn on ad's, weather you "need" them or not! Love this content and hope you continue to keep it up! Thank you so much Mr Hyperspace Pirate!

Top kek on mr fedora recombination illustration

There is something profoundly — yet beautifully — wrong with you.

You were very close to permanenteye eye damage. The problem is UV. Light violet lacy sparks are no problem. As current (not voltage) goes up the discharges turn bright blue. Still okay but still more current and the discharges turn white. White discharges are not eye-safe. They sure are loud and fun however.

Great video. Subscribed. Thank You.

hey just a quick question. how do you measure aproximately how many kv you output ( in any high voltage build). It seems like everyone have different values for air ionisation voltage and i can t know which is correct. Internet says its 30kv per cm some people say its 10kv my physics teacher says its 1kv exc

Отличный источник питания! Питать ускорители электронов , Х- лучи , протоны, гамма..

As you noticed, corona discharge was a huge problem with your multiplier stack. In scientific and commercial multipliers, this is greatly mitigated by smoothing the electric field to reduce the gradient, in much the same way that the topload allows you to collect charge. I've built multipliers in the 30-50kV range, so take my advice with a grain of salt, though I have had plenty of flash-over fun.

First, all of your solder joints are sharp points. It really doesn't matter what your dielectric is (including vacuum!) when those points generate extreme voltage gradients. Everything will very quickly break down in that environment. When going for extreme voltages, the easiest way to ease these gradients is to bury your solder joints in some flavor of small sphere. Conductivity isn't important so iron, steel, brass, and other inexpensive metals work fine. Beads, ball bearings, whatever you can find that is inexpensive should work.

The more extreme way of dealing with this is called a corona-ring. This is where you attach each stage of your multiplier to a high aspect ratio toroid that wraps all the way around your multiplier. This makes the electric field gradient from ground to top-load voltage very smooth, and since your diodes and capacitors are sitting inside this field, there is a much lower potential (haha) for any sharp solder joints to emit corona. If you go this direction, take a cue from those isolators you see on high voltage power lines and make rings on a stick to increase creepage distance when you build supports for the corona rings.

Second, increase your drive voltage and reduce your stage count. CW Multipliers have a complex capacitive reactance that gets higher as the number of stages go up, so your output droop can get bad as stages are added. In my case I went from a 6 stage monopolar design to a 3+3 stage bi-polar design and saw a significant reduction in output voltage droop with the same output load, so my real power throughput also went up. Additionally, the style of multiplier you used was a half-wave rectifier and converting to a full wave rectifier multiplier can help with voltage droop as well. I was using some parallel capacitors in my multiplier and switching them to a full-wave rectifier also significantly reduced droop at the output. This does require a center-tapped transformer, so you may find the complexity not worth the trouble.

Finally, in a ZVS driver, the transformer drive voltage is about 3.2 times the input voltage, which is why your transformer output significantly more voltage than you expected. In fact, you said you drove it at 8V, about exactly right to get the output voltage you wanted. Probe the tank capacitor voltage and you will see the problem!

That's really cool. I like it, but I got a question. It's neat looking at spark gaps but what can that be used for, other than eye destruction?🙂 thanks

A welders tip: if you've been "flashed" too much or watching too much electric sparks, well, that's ultra violet radiation and it burns the retinas. Cut a small potato in half and put the cut side against you eyes/eyelids for at least 10 minutes. Your headache will go away and your eyes will feel better🙂

I've always wondered what the practical limit of a Cockroft-Walton multiplier was with diodes. I was hoping to get about 4MeV out of one for, you know, reasons that have to do with why I chose "MeV" as a unit, but it looks like past a couple hundred keV it gets really, really hard not to just lose everything to corona discharge. Explains why commercial ones seem to only go up to about 200keV.

What software was that circuit simulation?

Please provide the 3D printed parts details in the description so that build the same parts as you...

Thank you for this interesting video.

Oh the memories.
As a teenager in the 1960s, I took the 12K volt neon sign transformer from my Tesla coil and constructed a six stage voltage multiplier. I used TV diode tubes with attached battery for isolated cathode heater. I used TV high voltage capacitors. The meter-high frame was wood and my attempt at eight stages failed when the arc crawled down the frame to ground. I too now recall the electrostatic effects, the buzzing, hissing and the smell of ozone. My spark-gap Tesla coil pulled 20 inch (50 cm) AC arcs when tuned, and the voltage multiplier pulled 8 inch (20 cm) DC arcs by comparison.

Magnificent.

You might consider making your multiplier into several modules. This way, in case one diode or capacitor fails, you dont lose the entire chain.

"It's also a pretty decent dog collar."
🤭🤭🤭🤭🤭

Very impressive! I marvel at what Tesla did with his coil and the parts that he used were not solid state as we have here. He certainly had leakage issues to overcome. I was just thinking about his tower at Wardencliff (sp) and if you might be able to get power from the earth right about the time you said you may add an earth ground rod. I think Florida has right elements to make that possible

That tripping hazard joke was underrated 😂

Great vid....like the transformer core design, any chance you can share it?

What is the program used to simulate a circuit called?
Awesome video!

Next time bro use spacial insulators in series with different stages of multiplications 1 insulator 2 multiplier 3 insulator 4 multiplier 5 insulator 6 multiplier etc

Use epoxy ceramic

I was able to make a 13 inch spark rubbing a paper towel over a PVC tube. This title -- Thirty Three Centimeter Spark from a Simple Experiment

I can smell the ozone from just watching this.

I just finished building a full wave multiplier stack. I used 10 nF, 20kV caps with the 2CL2FM diodes. The old tap water resistor works great on extremely high voltages. I put 5 kV input @ 50 khz / 50 mA and I'm getting 120 kV on a 12-stage CW multiplier. On 10 kV input, I'm running 240 kV + output on the multiplier. Having larger capacitors on the multiplier and doubling up diodes (2 x 2CL2FM diodes in series) helps with voltage stand-off protection. Mineral oil is the best dielectric for the multiplier.

Your diode multiplier uses a huge number of stages. So in reality you are likely dropping voltage. Raising the capacitance might help reduce voltage losses.

Can you make the arc move in a straight line ????

its literally like 15cm so 150kv NOT 500kv