if you've watched any of my videos over the past couple years you've probably
noticed this thing the background of my old shop in fact I think more people
have asked me about this thing tan pretty much anything else I've shown. so
what is it? well the device is called luminglass and it's basically just a
two-dimensional plasma globe. now I will admit I was pretty amazed with it when I
first got it I mean it does make some pretty cool patterns and even sends a
little streamer to your finger but honestly I got bored of it really quickly I
mean it doesn't even hurt me when I touch it and besides it can't ignite the
air around it on fire I think I need something much more extreme so gonna
make some heavy modifications to it. now before I go on I should warn you that
all the crazy stuff that's about to go down was done completely for educational
purposes now you definitely shouldn't try any of this stuff at home because by
the time I'm done with this thing it's gonna be transformed from a simple
office decoration to a terrifying but educational lightning machine
of death. now I should at least give you guys a demo of the original product
before I start tearing them down so luminglas comes in a bunch of
different sizes and colors there's blue ones and green ones
there's miniature ones and there's even these really cringey ones so how do
these things even work well not surprisingly it's very similar to a
plasma globe in a plasma globe the inside is pumped down to vacuum and then
back filled with a tiny amount of noble gas mixture then that's hit with a high
frequency AC which excites the gas that makes it glow now the 2D version is
different in that the glow you see isn't directly coming from the gas itself now
if you look closely you can see the plate is filled with a bunch of tiny
beads that are actually dyed with fluorescent compounds now the arc
doesn't actually go through these beads instead of weaves around them and makes
them glow from the small amount of UV light it produces alright so what can
you even do with it well touching the play is pretty nifty
because it draws a little arc of electricity to your finger but also you
can adjust the audio sensitivity on it that way it moves around when I talk or
even in unison to music
it can also do all the classic plasma globe tricks like wirelessly lighting up
CFLs and neon indicator lights if I stick some aluminum foil on top I can
even use the arc produced to tattoo little marks into my finger well that
was quite unpleasant so basically if you're just looking for a cool office
decoration then this thing actually fits the bill quite nicely but if you're like
me you want to destroy stuff with the awesome power of electromagnetism well
then this just isn't going to cut it. but luckily I can change that all right so
I've tore down a couple of these units to see what's inside now the drivers are
a little bit different but the general concept is still the same there's a
little flyback transformer here that's used to excite the gas mixture in the
plate then some transistors here are used to switch power to the Transformer's
primary coil now there's even a little microphone here so the NSA can spy on
you now as far as plasma generating circuits go these ones are pretty lame I
mean you probably won't even die if you touch the raw output of this thing. huh I
wonder what happens if I run this thing with nothing attached oh well that sucks
let's give that another go with some noble gas vials okay so so at least it
works but honestly it's still not very exciting but really I guess that's
expected since this whole circuit only draws about 10 watts now if I was lead
engineer on this project, of which I'm totally unqualified for, I would design
this thing use the max amount of power available on a typical household outlet
cuz let's be honest anything less than that is a wasted opportunity alright so
how do I make it better well I know it's that on my pimp light that even though
it only runs off as six volts the components inside are actually rated to
a minimum of 15 so that means if we disregard all the other ratings like
current or breakdown voltage in the transformer secondary then this
thing was basically made for higher voltages so that's what I'm gonna feed
it alright this is what the testing setup looks like so I start by feeding
power into this variac here which gives me an adjustable AC voltage and I
send this over here to this AC to DC converter from that I feed it into the
plasma lamp there so yeah let's give this thing a try and here we go alright
so my setup isn't a total failure let's bring it up to its original voltage okay
so that's about where it's supposed to be run
I swear it already looks brighter I'm gonna keep taking it up okay yeah it's
definitely getting brighter let's keep going and see what happens
oh man is getting so bright Wow look at all those crazy patterns that's amazing
can it go even higher oh no there it is! oh man that was so awesome gosh shame on
the engineers for not giving this the power supply it deserves that was so
much cooler so how do I put a bunch more power through one of these things
without everything breaking? well I think the most logical way would be to leave
the control circuitry intact and then swap out components on the switching
side that way you could feed that side from a higher voltage source but you
know what that sounds incredibly boring so instead
I'm gonna try using one of my own high voltage sources but which one should I
use? I just have so many awesome and deadly power supplies that it's hard to
pick just one so I think what I'm gonna do is revisit the classic Westinghouse
vs. Edison debate let's see whether DC or AC is better at powering one of these
fixtures let's start with DC so recently I've been trying to put together a giant
voltage multiplier tower for some insane DC voltages as I have some really
awesome experiments in mind oh wow that's so cool
now I've had more failures than I'd like to admit but here's my best prototype so
far. lt can do over a hundred thousand volts DC and the design is basically a
verbatim copy of youtube user Vidduley
his design is unusual in that there is no output resistor so you get these
intense pulses instead of a continuous arc now I would have thought this
would just blow all the diodes in an instant I've actually been pleasantly
surprised on how long this thing has lasted alright so now I have the output
of the multiplier feeding directly into the center of the fixture now let's see
what happens when I hit it with a hundred kV alright here we go whoa oh
wow that's freaking crazy that looks way cooler than the original product
yikes it looks like there's an arc trying to go through the glass there
I better isolate this thing from ground better this nice and stable platform
oughta do the trick let's give that another go so
unfortunately that platform did not last long enough to be tested
so I guess we have to break out another fixture oh I definitely don't
like the sound of that the arc is definitely favoring that hot spot in the
corner yeah it's definitely cracked must have failed from all that electrostatic
pressure it still works but not for long oh you
have to admit it is pretty amazing seeing all that charge bleed out well
might as well see what happens if I stick a ground lead close to the fixture
yeah I think that's about all she wrote on this lamp
sorry Edison but DC just isn't the right choice here you see with AC you can
transmit power through an insulator like glass without pushing electrons where
they don't want to go thank you for teaching us little lamp your sacrifices
are not in vain gosh learning is fun in terms of AC power supplies I have a lot
of choices I think something that's high frequency
is my best bet now I do have a bunch of these antique flybacks from the 40s
that should be a good choice I mounted a pair of fly backs inside this box then
submerged them in oil I also wound on my own primary so I could drive them with
ZVS drivers now this setup is capable of making some pretty cool arcs all right
let's see how well this setup drives a luminglas fixture well that uh that
isn't very impressive let me try raising the voltage ah that's better at least
it's brighter than what it was originally
oh wow listen to that hiss when I bring the screwdriver to the glass let's take
it a bit higher hmm well that's uh that's the highest I can go without
blowing my driver but it really isn't as impressive as I'd hoped
gosh the circuit isn't even drawing that much power this power supply is doing
tens of thousands of volts it has the ability to deliver a lot of current
I guess the impedance of these fixtures is just too high to allow that to happen
hmm how do we fix this this is where Tesla joins the debate as his resonantt
air core transformers take AC to a whole different level not only can they
generate gigantic voltages but the high frequency output just solve this whole impedence
issue so I think I'm gonna build a Tesla coil cuz let's be honest Tesla coils are
always the solution back when I overclocked a plasma globe I built a
spark gap Tesla coil that did the job pretty nicely although this time I want
to make something that's a bit more portable and also has some more control
options so I guess the first thing I have to decide is how I want to switch
power to the primary side of the circuit transistor technology has come so far in
recent years and believe it or not this little IGBT is capable of delivering 60
amps at 650 volts I won't be using it though because Soviet military surplus
is way cooler this right here is the GU 81 M generating pentode from the Soviet
Union it's meant for use in some big RF amplifiers but it should make a good
active switching element in Tesla coil so why do I pick this tube over all
the others on the market? it was cheap. so how do I use this to make a Tesla coil
well the tube acts as a switch to drive the transformer at its resonant
frequency it's kind of like a ye olde transistor in that sense with five
electrodes now the circuit requires a lot of
capacitors and not just any capacitors will do but luckily I scored a bunch of
really nice Soviet RF capacitors on eBay that probably won't explode when using
the circuit so how do I provide power to this thing for the supply I need a few
thousand volts at a scary amount of current so you can probably guess what
happens next here I collected microwave ovens from near and far and dumpsters
and thrift shops even from students who take my jiu jitsu class I think anybody
who knows me personally knows I'm always willing to accept old microwaves for my
projects I sorted my transformers and found a nice matching pair to run in
parallel in a half wave voltage doubler setup in fact the only silicon in this
entire circuit will be the doubler diode instead of buying an expensive
high-voltage high-current rectifier i just chained together a bunch of 10A10
diodes and then potted them in wax now I also needed a bunch of capacitors
for the doubler so I robbed caps from seven microwaves for this since these
vacuum tubes work by thermionic emission I need
something to heat the cathode so it can spit off electrons now I ended up using
yet another microwave transformer for this but this time I need a low-voltage
high-current so I drilled out the secondary and then wound on my own with
thick gauge wire. for the tank circuit I chained together some Soviet doorknob
caps using hammered copper pipe for the connections since this coil is such a
high operating frequency the skin effect means that regular wires just won't cut
it here I also used this really nice vacuum variable capacitor to make tuning
a breeze. speaking of tuning I went against the classic vacuum tube Tesla
coil build by winding a fixed primary now there isn't much I hate more than
winding at tappable transformer coil so instead I'm relying on the vacuum cap
for tuning the primary to match the residence of the secondary coil. no I did
not wind that I can barely sit still for five minutes let alone the five hours it
would have taken to wind that by hand instead I shelled out 35 bucks for a
lathe wound coil on eBay I also bought a little aluminum donut to stick on top to
increase the capacitance on the secondary side for the overall
construction I started by building a little table and then just started
tacking a bunch of parts to it I kept the power supply and tank capacitors in
the lower unit as most of that stuff would kill you if you touch it. I did
have to make one more coil the feedback coil and after some trial and error I
was forced to make one with a few taps on it
the finished coil looks pretty terrifying because well it is. now I got
really lucky in that all the parts fit just perfectly on that table because I
did not plan that outn I added a soft start to the cathode heater in an
attempt to be easy on the tube it works by powering it through a resistor then
after a few seconds I short that with a switch and now if I wasn't a lazy piece
of garbage I'd have used a time relay for this all right so the tubes hot and
everything's ready to go here goes nothing I guess
that's pretty cool
so you're probably wondering what would happen if you touch it well if you touch
most of stuff down there you'll probably die same goes for that and that and
anything else that at anode potential but what about that? well one way to find out
I guess oh wow it tickles don't try this at home
kids gosh I just love those sword like sparks it produces. using a pointy
breakout it helps but this kind of spark is pretty typical in a vacuum tube coil.
check this one out this box have a bunch of Soviet Nixie tubes now when they're
hit by the strong field from the Tesla coil they light up and look just like
hot coals. now I don't know about you but I think that's pretty frickin cool
so Drake what are you doing with your chemistry degree that you spent four
years of your life pursuing? oh yeah almost forgot I didn't make this to just
screw around it I made to light up one of my plasma fixtures wow that's a really
cool effect you didn't know any better you'd think it'd be lethal to hold
it like this but in reality it's only causing moderate damage I think it's
time to run one of the big plates on the Tesla coil I added a PVC fitting so
it'll fit nicely on top alright I put one of my big plasma plates on top let's see
what this thing is capable of. here we go. is that it? that's seriously it's all
it's gonna do? so apparently these lamps cause a huge jump in secondary
capacitance I want to see if I can retune the coil for the bigger top load
well that's weird I've swept through the range of my
vacuum cap and I just can't change the output I even tried adding more tank
capacitors it's like the lamp is loading it down or something. alright so this is
what I came up with it's an adjustable spark gap that in
theory will allow the coil to ring up for a bit before arcing to the plasma
lamp this will hopefully allow the lamp to glow brightly and also give me the
big sparks that I want
wow that is so much less boring than the original product too bad the power
supply is so lethal because I'd love to hang that from my wall I should build
like 10 more of these things just to put around my shop. gosh this fixture works
so well for remote powering who needs wires or batteries when you can just hold
light bulbs near this thing? if I put a bulb too close though it eats most of the
power before it makes it to the luminglas fixture so that's a bummer but
otherwise the effect is still really cool need a way to test all of your
laser flash lamps and gas tubes? with one of these by your desk it's as easy as
sticking the bulbs into the high voltage arc. this one's for all times sake
I bet you're surprised I have any of these left after the great plasma globe
sacrifice that happened a few videos ago. let's try that again with the much less
awesome plasma globe equivalent, the fluorescent tube. okay that's pretty fun it feels
like I'm holding a lightsaber I'm actually pretty surprised how much
light that gives off all right what else can I jam in there?
how about this screwdriver oh wow it's kind of like a Jacob's Ladder except I'm
one of the electrodes hmm I wonder what it'll do to a bunch of neon bulbs alright
that is pretty amazing check out all these awesome colors
I could just play with this thing for hours but I don't think my body would be
a big fan of that no I do have to say I am pretty impressed with how well the
vacuum tubes holding up because it took a beating during grid leak tuning
ok one more now this one has to be my favorite since NordVPN is
actually who made this project possible in fact I want to give a big THANK YOU
to NordVPN for sponsoring this video so why is NordVPN relevant to you or me?
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you'll get 75% off which is just $2.99 a month and plus if you use the promo code
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thank Nord VPN again for supporting my crazy projects you guys should
definitely check them out alright so that's about all I have for you
guys today until the next time stay safe and happy
tasing