Category Archives: arc

Custom Workstation Makes Plasma Cutting a Breeze

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A plasma cutter is probably top of every metalworker’s short list of dream tools. From freehand curves to long straight cuts, nothing beats a plasma cutter for getting the creative juices flowing. Unfortunately, there’s also the jet of superheated metal blasting through the workpiece to deal with, which is the reason behind this shop-built plasma cutting workstation.

[Regalzack] looks like he had a couple of design goals in mind for his table. A solid work surface isn’t a great idea for plasma cutting, so he designed the top as a grid of replaceable steel slats. Underneath is a hopper to …read more

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Little eBay Tesla Coil Gets an Upgrade

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Like so many of the projects we feature, this one started with a cheap eBay module purchase. In this case, it was a little Tesla coil that made decent sized arcs but wasn’t quite good enough. The result was a super-sized solid state Tesla coil with better results and room to grow.

As [GreatScott!] discovered, the little eBay Tesla coil has a pretty neat design. The exciter is a Slayer circuit, a super simple one-transistor design. His reverse engineering revealed that the primary coil is simply a loop trace on the PCB under the secondary coil. Sadly, his attempt to …read more

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Hacked CCFL Inverter becomes an Arc Lighter

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[GreatScott!] needs to light off fireworks with an arc rather than a flame, because “fireworks and plasma” is cooler than fireworks and no plasma. To that end, he attempted to reverse engineer an arc lighter, but an epoxy potted high-voltage assembly thwarted him. Refusing to accept defeat, he modified a CCFL inverter into an arc lighter, and the process is pretty educational.

With his usual impeccable handwriting and schematic drawing skills, [GreatScott!] documents that his CCFL inverter is a resonant Royer oscillator producing a sine wave of about 37 kHz, which is then boosted to about 2400 volts. That’s pretty …read more

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Arc Lighter become Plasma Pyrography Pen

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Wood burning can be quite a striking art form, but who wants to be stuck using an old-fashioned resistive heating element to char wood? You could go with laser engraving, of course, but that seems to take too much of the human touch out of it. So why not try a mini plasma pen and blow torch powered by a fancy cigarette lighter?

Arc lighters are rechargeable electronic lighters that look like a tiny stun-gun, and [NightHawkInLight] has been coming up with some interesting hacks for them. In this case, he extended the electrode leads out and mounted them to …read more

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