I hammered in an 8ft grounding rod outside my shop the other day, and although it sucked to do, it's allowed me to bring some of my fun plasma devices outside. It seemed to improve the output of my monster vacuum tube tesla coil, while also preventing back feeding big RF voltages onto my mains wiring.
Grounding is a surprisingly complicated subject when it comes to tesla coils and RF. Normally when you ground something using mains ground, it means you are locking it to 0 volts. However, when dealing with high frequencies, the sheer length of wire between the device and the actual connection to the earth introduces problems, due to the parasitic inductance. This means the wire connecting these two points can develop a huge voltage across it when switching big currents at high frequencies, like what happens with some tesla coils. In fact, a piece of foil on the floor often acts as a better tesla coil ground than using mains ground, simply because the foil is a physically closer source of charge.
I'm sure an electrician would have a stroke seeing the wiring choices I've made, but the outcome is hard to beat for what I'm doing.
Tyler Hargrove
2023-01-15 09:06:56 +0000 UTCTyler Hargrove
2023-01-15 09:06:02 +0000 UTCSean Daggett
2023-01-15 00:51:10 +0000 UTC