Category: Jack’s Status Reports

I’ve been kept busy this week by my other classes so I have to admit I didn’t contribute as much. Basically I helped sanding and assembling the new boards for the casing; and I also helped with the calculation and the installation of the changed primary coil, which we figured would yield the correct resonance frequency. So far we do have a working product other than the music modulation part. Next week I will make more contribution in the modulation part and hopefully can get all the functionalities in our original design.

This week I was involved in an extensive amount of testing and assembly with the group. During assembly phase, I was responsible for sending the printed plastic boards that eventually made up the casing of the design. After the general assembly of the entire design, I spent many hours with the group either at Caleb’s place or at the 220 lab debugging, making use of tools such as oscilloscope and waveform viewer to make sure the integration was smoothly done after testing of individual components. After conquering many problems, we figured out that the resonance frequency might have not been what we expected after integration we we were on the track of quickly re-design the primary coil. Next week hopefully we’ll make sure everything runs smoothly and is ready to be presented.

We’ve spent most of the time this week testing and creating the housing that will contain our final design, including the analogue designed circuit, the power supply system, as well as Tesla Coil itself that serves as the sound-generating device. I contributed by doing manual calculations when it came to debugging, as well as recording data read from multimeter and oscilloscope. At the same time, as we finished 3D-printing the housing, I helped sanding, polishing, as well as the assembly of the plates. Next week we’ll be done with debugging and put everything together.

This week I dedicated most of my time to the testing for each individual component. This will be the final testing period before final assembly. I’ve spent time in the 220 lab testing the resonance frequency of our Tesla coil, input & output correspondence of our circuit, as well as many other important metrics. I’ve also purchased an oscilloscope for better and more flexible individual testing so we don’t have to always run to the lab. For next week we should complete individual testing by fixing the primary coil. After that we will go right into assembly, as well as the fabrication of the housing for the Tesla Coil.

This week all three of us met up at TechSpark as well as the 220 lab for unit testing. We used devices such as the multimeter, oscilloscope, as well as wave generator to test both the primary and secondary coil and the designed circuit that we’ve soldered onto the board. We did witness errors, which was within our expectation for initial part testing. These errors will be describe in detail in the team weekly report. Next week we are aiming to debug what we’ve built, and once that is done, we are going to assemble the parts together and shoot for final overall testing.

I helped build the circuit. My primary work was wrapping the coils for the Tesla coil alongside Caleb, where I was the wrapper for the primary coil and the person keeping track of the number of turns on the secondary coil (456 turns). I’m a bit behind schedule as we haven’t started testing. I will start testing this upcoming week.

This week, having received the components for the primary coil I began assembling it. It is nearly completed, however for the purpose of keeping windings properly spaced, I plan to add hot glue to keep things in place. As such I am pretty much on schedule, and am hoping to perform specification testing throughout the next week.

This week, I ordered the primary coil components in alignment with our SSTC design requirements. Based on our system specification and the 48V LED power supply driving the primary coil. I finalized the selection of the primary winding conductor and ordered 50 feet of 18 AWG solid copper wire to construct the primary coil. The 18 AWG gauge was selected to safely handle the expected primary current while minimizing resistive losses and heat generation during 10-minute continuous operation, as required by our performance metrics. The estimated length allows for 6–8 turns around a ~5-inch diameter base with additional margin for lead routing and adjustment during tuning.

I invested most of my time studying the power circuitry, making sure that our design would meet not only the power, but also the safety requirement. Instead of hand-picking all the electronic components, I decided it was better for us  to go with a preassembled power unit due to its industrially tested  power supply, reliability, and safety design. The control circuitry will be powered off of the 12 V rail of a computer power supply; the power for the primary coil will be provided by a 48 V LED power supply. Besides, I took many hours to have a better understanding of the idea behind Tesla Coils, as this is essential given that none of us have actually built one prior.

I did plenty of research (at least one hour a day) to get myself more acquitted with analogue circuit. Since my task at this stage is mostly power circuit, this week was mainly spent reviewing the overall power section of the system and understanding how power is distributed to different parts of the circuit. I focused on identifying the main power paths, the role of the input supply, and how different voltage levels are provided for control and switching components. General considerations such as startup behavior, stability, and safety were explored at a conceptual level. I also spent time comparing possible approaches for supplying and regulating power and noting potential constraints based on component ratings. This work helped establish a clearer direction for future design decisions and implementation planning.