A few selected projects

Hi everyone

As the site is nearing completion, I thought to pimp a few projects that I’m somehow the most proud of…

The first is certainly the PL509 vacuum tube half bridge amplifier, because it’s probably the weirdest outburst of creativity I ever had, that somehow turned out working just like I expected! I utilized my previous experience with wireless power in order to try and use vacuum tubes in a fashion that would be more expected for power semiconductors, switching efficiently at high speed with square drive signal. Wireless power was an easy way to provide power to the tube heaters and grid bias voltages for tubes floating at several kV potential difference! In future I would like to scale up this design to drive a truly gigantic Quasi-CW Tesla coil, and explore to what length can one actually grow sword streamers.

PL509 half bridge nonlinear amplifier with wirelessly powered heaters

The second would be Big Bad the SSTC, because of awesomely beautiful plasma display it produces, which is difficult to capture on photos or video. I’ve put a lot of work into this coil to get it right, and is still awaiting some upgrades, most importantly a digital microcontroller-based control board.

Big Bad’s first spark

Finally, I like the Wireless power demonstrator circuit because it became unexpectedly popular among other electronics enthusiasts. It seems like a great way to motivate kids to start doing hands-on electronics – perhaps I should really start making some kits and selling them – but would really need more time and some buddies to help me with it!

Wireless power demonstrator in operation

 

 

Hello humans!

Hello dear readers!

Let me present you my new site. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve been a heavy electronics geek, concentrating mostly on various high voltage devices such as Tesla coils. For most of the time I’ve been keeping my projects as hobby, because that way I felt relaxed and could be pedantic with my work. However, I did attend some local and country competitions with good success during my school years, and also did some work for my college in recent times (BSc thesis on wireless power).

The projects I chose were often ahead of my capabilities, as well as time, budget, component and equipment availability requirements. I never really took count on how many projects I started; in case I’d get stuck on one, I’d always find another idea to work on. Needless to say, some ideas turned out as complete failures and were binned – despite which they still served as a valuable lesson. For most of the time I had no income of my own, and all money I used had to come from my parents. The parts were also extensively acquired through scavenging old equipment, or generous donations from other people.  Often, I’d randomly come across a cool electronic item, and then contemplate what kind of project could I build around it.

Still, not many of my endeavors would succeed without gratuitous amounts of help  from the high voltage enthusiast community forum, 4hv.org – with special thanks to members such as Steve Conner, Steve Ward and many other Tesla coiling pioneers. I joined there in my early high school days, and used to spend hours a day either posting on that site or chatting with it’s members, some of I got quite friendly with. And I still often hang around there, despite the site may not be in it’s whole former glory. As a result, most of the documentation I ever made for my projects ended up as project threads on the forum, and slowly sank into oblivion as the time passed. I thought it’d be nice to have all my projects documented in one place online, and accessible to everyone, instead of just being forgotten – that’s one good reason for me to start this website.

After getting onto college, I was left with little time to work on projects, and started to realize how valuable the time I spent on them was.Recently, I started to look towards enrolling a graduate study in USA, and my projects are definitely my biggest asset that would put me ahead of other students. Going to live in another country would mean quite a sacrafice for me – moving away from my family, friends, and projects  – but it’s nothing compared to possibilities I could have at some of world’s more famous educational institutions. I know that I may never reach my full creative potential without this step, and I hope this site will help me reach it.

Since my time is quite limited, I decided to first summarize my projects briefly along with links to my 4hv project threads. Later, I hope to grow the pages into small articles that summarize what I learned from the projects.

Thanks for reading and happy new year!

Marko