Destroying the world

How to sound like a Dalek

March 7, 2010

Or more precisely – how to build a ring mod and light flasher. [If you are wondering what a Dalek sounds like, take a look/listen here] The first step I took was to download the manual for the MoogerFooger and find out what all the knobs do. It looks to me like Nick Briggs uses [...]

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Test Drive of the Daleks

May 25, 2009

Finally got the bugs out of the system… I now officially declare this project over. Time to work on something new…

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Steering of the Daleks

May 4, 2009

I’ve been battling (for quite a while) with the steering controller for the full sized Dalek. I was shown these neat servo gearboxes from ServoCity.com. So I went ahead and ordered one for the HiTec 7955 servo. The modifications to the servo were really very difficult to do, and I hope I never have to [...]

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Fixing a Tesla coil

April 6, 2009

All of a sudden my DRSSTC Tesla coil stopped working. It took a long exposure in a darkened room to see the very faint corona around the top of the primary coil – that’s definitely not right. The coupling between the secondary and primary coils was too tight. So I rewrapped the primary coil tighter [...]

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Musical Tesla Coils…

March 30, 2009

…and I guess I use that term lightly. I’ve been building a MIDI modulator for the DRSSTC tesla coil I put together last year. One of the problems is tuning a 555 based oscillater to match MIDI note numbers. I played around with Excel for a while, but couldn’t really get anything useful going. So [...]

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“Vintage” variac casing

March 29, 2009

I’ve been going through all my shelves in the basement and trying to complete as many of the unfinished projects as I can, just to clear some space. One of the things I needed to do was box up the old Staco Autotransformer I have. I was faced with this: But luckily I found Tim [...]

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Power of the Daleks

February 26, 2009

I’ve been slowly working away on the Dalek – grabbing a few hours here and there. I’ve got the basic power distribution system in – unfortunately the drive system is 24v, and other parts need 12 and 6v. Rather than use wasteful linear regulators I put together some switching ones, using some free samples I [...]

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Pete’s Quick Hyperbaric Spark Gap ™

September 10, 2008

Pete put together this pressurized static spark gap – the results are some of the best we’ve seen so far.

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Adjusting the phase on a synchronous rotary spark gap

September 10, 2008

This footage shows the advantage of having a phase controller for the synchronous motor. Using the dial we can alter the phase relationship of the motor until it dials in exactly with the up and down swing of the AC supply.

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First Tesla coil test footage

August 15, 2008

We managed to get some footage of the tesla coil running last night, just before we switched over from a static gap to a rotary gap. It looks like the rotor is not quite in sync with the up and down swing of the AC line voltage. So that’s the next thing to fix.

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