Weekend update

Well it was a pretty lame weekend as far as the hobbies were concerned. The lawn needed mowing and the shed and pool needed cleaning. By the time that was done the weekend seemed to have disappeared. However, I did still manage to squeeze in some work on the Tesla Coil.

I was looking at my RSG and I decided that there was a fair risk of surface tracking between the stationary electrode supports and the bolts holding the motor, especially if things got dusty. I needed to provide some kind of insulation between them.

After toying around with the idea of gluing in a vertical piece of plastic, I decided it would be much easier to use a snugly fitting, built-for-purpose printed part. To this end I whipped up a suitable design in a CAD package and printed it in white ABS:

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I used a 100% fill for maximum voltage standoff. Unfortunately using such a high fill rate causes issues with shrinkage so the finish wasn’t the best, though perfectly adequate for the job. Here they are glued in place:

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You can see that now it is difficult for an arc to surface track from the aluminum electrode support to the motor bolts, as it would have to travel up and over the plastic insulator.

Looks neat and should work well I think.

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