Mini High Voltage Power Supply

Hey everyone, I’m back on another project.

If you’ve seen my other instructables (and the title, duh), you would know that I specialize in high voltage and thats exactly what we’re doing in this project.

And since we’re dealing with high voltage,

*WARNING!* THIS PROJECT IS ALL ABOUT MESSING WITH POTENTIALLY DANGEROUS STUFF, SO IF YOU ARE AN INCAPABLE CHILD, PLEASE AT LEAST HAVE PARENTAL GUIDANCE!

Also

Please read everything so you don’t miss any important details.

Ok now that that’s dealt with, let’s jump right into it!

perf board, 2 Power MOSFETS (irfp260 and above, irfz44n, etc. I used 30n06 MOSFETS because those were what I had at the time). 2 heat sinks to go along with the MOSFETS (don’t forget the thermal paste or silicone pads), 1 555 timer, 1 10k, 1 15k and 47 ohm resistor (higher watt rating preferred), 1k potentiometer, 1 1nf polypropylene film capacitor (I used a 100v capacitor because thats what I had) and 1 470uf electrolytic capacitor (I used 16v), push on push off switch, two pairs of dc connector jacks, High voltage transformer (I used a half broken one from an arc lighter, thin insulated wires, Thick insulated wires, ring terminals, 6v 700mAh battery epoxy, tape, heat shrink tubing(to cover exposed parts.

TOOLS

Soldering iron

Solder

Multimeter(to check if everything is connected properly)

Solder the parts together on perf board in a VENTILATED area.

Of course, this instructable was made to be simple and not optimal, its not exactly the most efficient.

You may add whatever you think would be better for the circuit.

If you soldered everything right, you should have a functioning high voltage supply, but since my transformer was incredibly fragile, I decided to cover its connections with epoxy since I have had failure due to unprotected wires before.

You are also probably wondering.

Why would you take apart an arc lighter and reassemble it into a less potable version?

Well, number 1, I wanted more power, 2 is that arc lighters turn off every 10 seconds or so.

If you wanted to use them as power supplies, they would only turn on for 7- 10 seconds before turning off, which sucks for me.

PS. The wires look like a mess because i had a limited supply of solder left, i i had to resort to using a bunch or wires. The heat sinks also look like a mess because I don’t have my properly sized heatsinks YET.

XENON FLASH LAMP + HIGH VOLTAGE + MAGNETS = AWESOME!

It kind of looks like a smooth square wave or a rough sine wave.

I also made a MINI jacob’s ladder

I HAVE tried using a 11.1v 1200 mAh battery and it gave beautiful yellow- purple arcs that stretched even farther than with the 6v battery’s 1.3cm arc but, it only works for like 4 seconds before one of the capacitor wire legs melted and the single MOSFET also died for some reason. That’s why I put two in parallel instead of one. Although i wont try it again with the 11.1v because of my anxiety.

I am planning on using this transformer on a future BETTER PORTABLE TESLA COIL Instructable so stay tuned for that.

This instructable took an hour to make and I am very tired since it’s past 12 AM so the quality is garbage.

But still, I hope you guys enjoyed this.
Stay safe and um, don’t touch live wires.