Question: Neon Sign Transformer 15KV 30ma

Does anyone know where I can get a 15,000V 30ma neon power supply?

I've searched the internet and the only place I can find them is on ebay, and right now they are scarce there too.

 

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What do you need it for?

Perhaps you could build one if you really need one.

 

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i have one... if you live in los angeles, i can tell you were to go...

otherwise... i would call neon repair shops.. and electronic junk yards...

any large city should have both....

i can find them for about 20 bucks.... on average.


are you going to build a rail gun? or a TESLA coil??? or jacobs ladder???

if you get one... be very careful... and what ever switch you use to turn you experimental system ON...

be sure to use a rheostat.. and a dead mans switch... i..e

what ever switch you use... should automatically disconnect the power if your hand reduces its pressure on the switch.

i.e.. otherwise.. you might get electrocuted... continuosly... rather than just a shock...

the resistance of the body is about 25,000 ohms.. so at 15 thousand volts, your pretty close to the danger zone.

as long as your careful, high voltage can be great fun...

i used to use my neon transformer, as a 300 watt cigarette lighter.

-MT

 

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Oh, man, I tried to find a good high voltage power supply once, but I failed. I only ofund one place where I could get one, and the guy wouldn't sell it to me becuase of liability issues.

 

Got to remember.. it is not voltage that kills a person... it's the amps. You can pump 1,000,000 volts if you like... as long as the amps is fairly low, you will live.

 

High voltages kill because of Ohm's Law and the electrical resistance of the human body.

Without the volts the amps don't flow.

If you don't believe it, try as much as one microamp at 1,000,000 volts, but not please on anybody but yourself.

People survive very high voltage shocks from static electricity because of the short durations. The same current for an extended period would be another matter.

--- Ron.

 

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MT is giving good advice, but no one yet posting here seems to know that the typical high voltage transformer used with a neon sign is a "saturatable core" design. This means that when the neon sign discharge starts to draw current, the iron core saturates to automatically drop the voltage way down to what ever value is required by the sign (Long discharge path will require more voltage than a short one, and I do not remember the typical drop per meter, but it is on the order of a few, at most, hundred volts. My memory is failing on this so I will guess to drive the point home: 130V/m. If someone has access to AC volt meter and a neon sign, exercise some care* and check my guess.)

Some people posting here seem to think you can get both high voltage and significant current from this transformer at the same time. - you can not.
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*An excellent rule to follow when working with electricity is to always keep one hand in your pocket.

 

ACTALLY... YOU CAN GET... 10,000 AMPS FROM SUCH A TRANSFORMER.
(just not directly....)

by using the 15,000 volt.. 300 ma tranformer... to charge a bank of high voltage capacitors... designed in quality and size, SO as to be able to fully obsorb... the 1/120 of the 300 watts delivered per sec... i.e.. per wave.

then... our capacitor.. charged to 15,000 volts... can.. just as in done in tesla coils.. can be made to discharge... THREW ANOTHER SYSTEM.. COMPOSED OF A short lenght of thick copper...

having thus... a system with a large 15,000 volt capacity.. and the very short conductor.. or inductance...

the lc curcuit formed.. then has a very high frequency of vibration when disruptively discharged... i.e... it can be discharged in 1 millionth of a sec... thus the power levels... can be huge... and instant.. but short lived.

i.e.. if the discharge was instead of at 60 htz.... was at 3 million htz...

and if the resistance of the copper tube was say... .001 ohms...

and if the resistance in the actual discharge contacts were low.. we can generate massive instant pulses of amperage... like electrical hammers.


for example..

10,000 / 1 ohm.... yeilds... 10,000 instant amps.... bamm..

but the disruptive discharge is said to have about 20 ohms, which ruins everything..

which is one reason, TESLA... invented numerous ways to reduce this discharge resistance, and so... was able to develop greater power levels for the same voltage.

by this method you can generate millions of amps... and build rail guns.



-MT

 

It's the voltage that makes electrons flow, that is it creates amps. Maybe my number was too unrealistic but the point is VOLTS cannot kill you. It's like saying gravity kills you. Being bombarded with electrons is what would kill you, not the force that pulls them.

If you could somehow drop the resistance in a human, than I am sure 1M volts will not kill you.

 

Yeah, I'll be building something of high voltage destiny, but its "pseudoscience" by nature and this would make it impossible for you to believe what I am building. If it actually functions I won't be speaking of it to anyone.

 

You seem to be forgetting one very important thing: Capacitor will not charge up to 15,000 volt even with many cycles of AC.

You will need a rectifier and it must not breakdown in the reverse direction even if 15,000 + 15,000 /.707 = 36,216 Volts is applied to it. (the peak votage of a "15kilo volt transformer" is about 21,216 Volts, not 15,000V) perhaps factor is 0.636 not 0.707, I forget but you get the point I hope.

I do not see your point even if you had not made this error. You can get enough energy out of a small flash light battery to charge a capacitor to 15,000volts. You do not even need to limit this to a small capacitor because the charged capactor is storing the energy in the electrostatic stress on the dielectric, very much like a spring stores energy by internal stress, but the battery, even a tiny AA cell, has lots of CHEMICALLY stored energy in it. The difference is like trying to drive your car on a wind up spring instead of energy stored in a chemical fuel.

Unless the capacitor is enormous, even a tiny hearing aid battery should be able to fully charge it, so what was your point?

 

the same effect can be achieved with a mercury vapor rectifier.

 

Get a patent. Then let me in on the business deals

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That is like saying "He didn't die because I stabbed him with a knife; he died because of the blood he lost."

-- Ron.

 

this seems like it would be true.

if i cut both my carotid arterys and did not bleed would i die?

 

radicalman@surfside.net

i cant help you... and i swear to god almighty.. i would never steal anything...

i love high voltage...

-MT

 

IT IS CLEAR.... you know very little about electronic engineering.

and if you do... you have never studied TESLA COILS....

i forgive you.. and i will not insult you at this time.


when the transformer is operating... if it is connected to a capacitor...

the capacitor... is charged to 15,000 volts.. then zero.. then reverses..

and up to 15,000 again... but oposite poalrity... yes...

im talking about glass capacitors... or mylar or oil... or air..


the idea.. is that at each moment the voltage reaches 15,000 ..

the cap.. is discharged.. instantly.. disruptively... by a short.

an arc... a quick connection...

this discharge.. connects the 15,000 volts cap.. to a new curcuit..

a much smaller one.. with much smaller resistance..

and due to its.. much smaller inductance.. the discharge time. is very fast.

and so... by simple caluclation of the ohms of the system.. we can design things to generate the huge discharge pulses.

this can be done... by useing a spark gap.. which we adjust is size, until it stops discharging...

then we make the gap smaller... untill it discharges...
that would be our max volatge point..

our 15,000 volt discharge... but like i said.. the arc, may have 20 ohms..

so typically its hard to get amps any higher than 500 to 1000.....

but TESLA found simple ways to reduce that ohms...

-MT

 

If it's one of your tesla devices, I would rather like to see it in action when it's finished.

If it isn't, and you're out of ideas, then please build an insanely large array of LEDs, erect it on a distant hill and light it up. Cause muchos panic!

 

To MT:

If you read my prior post, you will see that I am not disputing that with suitable circuitry one can get the energy from even a tiny hearing aid battery to charge even a rather large capacitor to 15,000 volts. There are lots of circuits that can do this, but I can not follow your description well as there seem to be some conflicting ideas in it. (At times you seem to be using the fact that an AC resonate circuit can be designed to resonantly build to high voltages (I have seen an arc about 4 feet long thru the air when we were playing around with one. I worked for nearly 15 years on the controlled fusion problem used ignitrons and very fast (low inductance) capacitors a lot, so I probably know much more about all this than you.) If you are going to use a resonate circuit approach at 60 Hz, you will need a hell of a big capacitor and an inductor that standing on the floor will come up to your waist.

BTW, with that big (floor-standing and several hundred pounds) inductor and only a D cell battery (and a soldered connection via short piece of No. 00 wire to one post of the inductor from the + or central terminal of the D cell), and a car battery clamp around the outside of the D cell with another short piece No 0 wire (a little more flexible) to the other post of the inductor you can make and air arc longer than the gap between the inductor posts, at least a foot long air arc. (I have done this too.)

About 20 or 30 seconds after making the connection, use a long, dry, nylon rope to quickly pull the car battery clamp off and far from the D cell. DO NOT do it by hand. -If you do, there is a good chance the "inductive kick" will kill you when the circuit is broken. - This set up is fun to do, but please be careful. It works just like if the old Model A Ford's spark ignition system, but IT CAN KILL YOU even though only one D cell is used. Also be extremely careful when clamping the clamp on the outside of the D-cell as any slight interuptions of the contact will make small spark and if that scares you, you might enlarge the gap. - Make this connection with one hand in you pocket and no part of your body touching the inductor, not even the case. Best if the D-cell is a nearly rigid vertical extension of one post of the inductor. (I.e. that piece of No 00 wire only an inch or two long. Use low temperature solder.)

I will close by giving a clear description (unlike yours) of easier way to get 1.5KV DC* from a 1.5v battery using only 1000 small (cheap low-votage ones that fit easily on a circuit board.) capacitors and 2000 photo diodes (conductors when lit, fairly good insulators when not, also mounted in two rows on the circuit board.) in two sets only one set in the light at any time. - Dark room and flash light required. (See footnote for reducion of component numbers and costs.)

Initially one set of the photo diodes is “on” and connecting all capacitor in parallel to 1.5 V battery to charge each to 1.5 volts. The light is then moved to fall on the other set to connect the 1000 little capacitors in parallel by illuminating the other set which connect between adjacent pair of capacitors, making a series chain with 15KV between it ends.

Everything easily fits on a simple circuit board and can cost less* your 15KV transformer alone. None of your complex and ill described circuit of transformers, arc switches, Tessla coils, etc. and without the implicit self contradiction of a charging tiny capacitors (must be tiny as the charge available in (1/120)second from the saturable neon transformer is limited) and yet a resonate circuit (which requires large capacitors at 60Hz) to build up to 15KV over many cycles.

Perhaps I just could not follow you. Try again to be at least half as specific as I was in my description above of how to get 15KV from a 1.5V battery. My description (second paragraph above) only requires two sentences as my method is simply and without any self contradiction or all your complex equipment. Try again.
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*Use this first series string as "1.5KV battery" and 20 more photo diodes to step up to the fully 15KV is probably cheaper and more compact that buying more capacitors and diodes to do it all in one step. You lose about half of the energy with each switching of diodes "on" so lowest cost design may be 1.5V -->15V-->150V --> 1.5Kv -->15KV in five times 10 steps, if you do not care about the efficiency, but because of the energy loss, the capacitors in each stage must be about twice the capacity of the next stage and that can add cost of each. I.e. approximately only 80 capacitors and 160 photo diodes in groups easily illuminated separately in sequence. (In each step up to capacitor of half the capacity, 2/3 of the charge remains in the series string so to go from 1.5 to 15V you need about 15 capacitors in the 1.5V series string - I won't do this accurately, but wanted to explain why more than 50 capacitors are required. This "remaining charge" is not the loss mechanism, that is more complex, and in part unavoidably radiative, as well as resistive, but I do not want to teach this part now.)