Making 500,000 VOLT ARC with Marx Generator

Potting the generator in wax or submerged in oil would stop the resistors from arcing over and you can leave the spark gaps exposed

the moment when you touch high voltage arc is just scary xd

Hussam Aldean Mohammed Abbas

I would say it is sexier than the sexiest lady. period.

Ohoh... :D How about a lightning detector? :D

suddenly my 150v power supply feels kinda lame.

Ms. Fixit

I need this...

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

Oh I'll find an application for it, you just wait!!

Would the frequency of the arcs change if you added or subtracted capacitor legs? I clocked the sparks at the end at 192/minute or just over 3 Hertz.

kuraz

i wonder if you pay ElectroCUTE royalties every time you use her music, like pocketmoney...

Can you try to make a DC spinning arc like posted on your subreddit and explain how it works?

Now I see Michael Horn said the same transformer oil thing, I hadn't seen that :D

For a rebuild I think you could use like 3x 330k resistors in series for bigger insulation, maybe double the capacitors at each stage (pararell for bigger capacitance). For the gaps, I think the last stage's gap should be the smallest, and the first ones should not trigger by the supply voltage, only the last one. This would make sure all the capacitors are charged, so when the last cap reaches the sparking voltage, it would trigger all of them. For the Corona discharge problem, you could use transformer oil, to submerge the circuit, except the spark gaps. The video was really cool :)

ElectroBOOM [Mehdi Sadaghdar]

Not Zener, because they don't break down to low resistance, but a DIAC is more like it.

Marco Vujevic

You know the type/image of Thor they used in all the Marvel movies? Blond guy, muscles, etc? yeah. wrong. I know now how Thor would look like today.

You should definately film this with a high speed camera, and maybe submerging the circuit in transformer oil except for the spark gaps would work better than the polyurethane?

Mehdi! Nice work! Sparks this big become more of an art form than a functional piece. They are something to appreciate. That’s what drives half of my passion for sparks. Loved the car crash sound effects lol

Andrew Weir

Can one model a spark gap as two super high voltage ideal zener diodes in parallel pointing in opposite directions? Maybe in series with a resistor?

Peter Stevens

You crazy bastard ... stay safe :-P

Zephy Foxy

This gets kind of scary but that's what makes it fun lol