instructables

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit

by gregtich

I bought this small, inexpensive musical Tesla coil kit from Amazon for my son's school project. Fortunately I
bought two so I could put one together first and make sure it worked before my son built his. I made a few
mistakes on mine so I thought I would share.

This is a relatively simple project if you know how to solder thru hole components.

You will need:

Soldering iron
solder
15 - 24 volt, 2 amp DC power supply (a laptop computer power supply worked)
Audio input device like a smartphone or MP3 player

Also helpful is a multmeter and a magnifying glass.

This instructable assumes you know how to solder through-hole components, and can identify basic electrical
components.

This project uses household current so you must take appropriate safety precautions.

The heat sinks get hot with prolonged use. Use caution when handling after use.

When operating this device, or any other Tesla coil, do not put any other electronic devices unnecessarily close.
This included pacemakers.

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit: Page 1

Step 1: Resistors

The first problem I ran into is the instructions. The pair)

English translation is not very helpful and had one
important error. The 10k resistor is brown, black, black, red brown
(bottom pair).
There are 4 resistors. The English instructions that
came with my kit shows R1 and R4 to be 2k and R2 Once you have identified the resistors, solder the10k
and R5 10k but the Chinese instructions, the circuit resistors in R1 and R4 and the 2k resistors in R3 and
diagram and the board say the opposite. The color R5.
code is wrong in the English directions as well. The
2k resistor is red, black, black, brown, brown (top

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit: Page 2

 Download
http://www.instructables.com/ORIG/FN5/KON4/JE4KJ6OX/FN5KON4JE4KJ6OX.pdf
…

Download
http://www.instructables.com/ORIG/F77/GA0D/JE4KJ6S1/F77GA0DJE4KJ6S1.pdf
…

Step 2: LEDs, Capacitors and Connectors

Solder the LEDs, capacitors, audio input, and power plug.

Make sure you are careful to place C1, the electrolytic capacitor, in the correct orientation.

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit: Page 3

Step 3: Don't Mix Up the Transistors!

On my first attempt I didn't realize the large
transistors are different. These are attached to the
heat sinks (radiators) with the thermal grease. I
definitely needed a magnifying glass to read the faint
print on these two items.
It might be tempting to solder the heat sink pegs to
the PCB but don't. I tried that but learned that heat
sinks actually work pretty well to conduct away heat!
When I tried to remove them later to switch the
transistor/MOSFET I had a very difficult time.

Test fit them in the board before you tighten the

screws to the heat sink.

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit: Page 4

Step 4: The Coils

The large coil needs to be attached to the board. You can use cyanoacrylate glue but hot glue
worked better for me. The kit contains something that looks like a stick of hot glue but I didn't use
this and can't vouch for it.
When soldering the lead in the PCB, you need to remove fine coat of insulation. You can do this by
light sanding or touch a flame to the wire to burn off the insulation.
Solder the thick wire, (black or white in the illustrations but red in my kit) to the board as shown in
the pictures. I believe the direction is important. Follow the illustration and coil it counter-clockwise
when viewed from the top.
Make sure this wire does not touch the coil. When I first plugged it in the wire it arced to the coil
where they touched. There needs to be a gap between them.
Last, use the supplied screws and pegs on each corner for legs.

When you plug it in you should get about a 1 cm spark at the tip of the wire that protrudes from the top of the coil. If
you plug an audio source in, that spark reproduces the sound.

The instructions caution about prolonged use and heat buildup. We might try adding a fan if we plan to run it for
more than a couple minutes at at time to help cool the transistors.

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit: Page 5

Your directioins for the kit are great! Which kit specifically did you get?

It is sold by Aoshike on Amazon: Aoshike DC 15-24v 15W Mini Music Tesla Coil Plasma Speaker
diy kits plasma loudspeaker Tesla Wireless Transmission Diy KITS
http://a.co/0zIkKFv

Mini Musical Tesla Coil Kit: Page 6