Topload design and selection for Tesla coils

The topload of a Tesla coil serves more than one purpose. The most important and why it is there in the first place is that it acts as a capacitor that can store the high voltage charge and it will also lower the resonant frequency of the secondary circuit.

The magnetic field around a topload will prevent sparks from forming on the top winding of the secondary coil and also in some degree prevent sparks from going inwards towards the secondary coil, primary coil and strike rail.

It also adds more distance out from the center and height to the entire assembly to avoid spark length being limited if it would always strike to the ground because of a short distance.

Round and smooth surfaces are preferred to get the longest possible sparks when corona losses is avoided. A uneven surface will result in many small sparks, barely visible to the naked eye where energy is dissipated and this means there is less energy to be put into the spark you are aiming to get.

Round and smooth surfaces almost only leaves us with two shapes, spheres and toroids.

Spheres can result in problems with sparks going downwards to strike the primary coil or result in racing sparks along the secondary coil. This is caused by the electromagnetic field shape from the sphere. If a Sphere is used it is best to place the break out point on the top of it so sparks would be forced as far away from the secondary coil as possible.

Toroids gives the best electromagnetic field shaping where sparks are much less likely to travel inwards towards the secondary coil. If the diameter of the toroid is very large a secondary smaller toroid can be used underneath to ensure that there is no breakout from the top winding of the secondary coil.

Solid vs skeleton

From an efficiency point of view it doesn’t really seem to matter whether you use a solid metal toroid, or a piece of flexible ducting bent round into a ring, or a skeleton frame made out of tubing, they all work much the same. However, if you are wanting to run the coil without a breakout point, you’ll find that a smooth surface gives a single large streamer that wanders around the topload, whereas a rough one can generate several shorter streamers.

Do use these materials

Copper: One of the best conductors in terms of price/resistance ratio.

Aluminium: About 2 times the electrical resistance of copper.

Corrugated aluminium air duct is made entirely from aluminium that is twisted to form a continues lock seam.

Two frying pans mounted opposite against each other can form a small, uniform and cheap topload. The goes for two savarin cake molds, mounted opposite against each other, they come in a wide variety and some even have a filled middle which makes them easy to mount on a secondary coil.

Styrofoam torus/donut/toroid shapes from a hobby store covered in aluminium tape makes for a light weight and cheap toroid, it can however be hard to get a very smooth surface.

Two bottom parts from beer or soda cans can form a tiny topload.

Brass: About 4 times the electrical resistance of copper.

For connections through a threaded rod or bolts to mount the topload on, brass is the prefered material as its resistivity is still good compared to how rigid and strong it is.

If possible, avoid these materials, they are not optimal

Metallized polyester flexible air ducting: The polyester film is very thin and only rated for a maximum operating temperature of 71 C. A break out from the surface of the film could easily damage or melt the film. The spiral is made from spring steel.

Stainless steel: About 40 times the electrical resistance of copper.

The stainless steel salad bowls from Ikea are cheap, almost round and easy to build a sphere from.

Udo Lenz at the 4hv.org forums made some very specific measurements on topload and arc current on a DRSSTC on three different power levels, where the highest was producing 80 cm arcs. His measurements for the DRSSTC was inspired by the measurements by Greg Leyh from the worlds largest SGTC Electrum.

Hydron at highvoltageforum.net has made some other very specific measurements with a battery driven data recorder: https://highvoltageforum.net/index.php?topic=117.0

The current through the topload is

$\mbox{Power dissipation}=\mbox{Current}^{2}\cdot\mbox{Resistance}$

The current through the topload is given (at a given operating point of your coil). If you increase the resistivity, the dissipation in the topload goes up (see equation above) and so your Q factor goes down. If the topload was superconductive, it would not dissipate anything and won’t do anything to your Q factor.

Choosing minor and major diameter

A rule of thumb for choosing the minor diameter for a DRSSTC topload toroid is to take the secondary coil diameter and use the same value.

Kind of the same rule can be used for the major diameter, take the length of the secondary winding and that is your toroid major diameter.

These rules apply if you follow the general design guidelines for sizing of the secondary coil.

The minor diameter will affect the breakout voltage, so if the minor diameter is too large then the coil will not break out without a break-out point. Too small a minor diameter will cause it to break out at a lower voltage depriving the coil of some of the voltage build up on the toroid, usually resulting in multiple smaller streamers.

The major diameter affects the field control under the toroid, so too small and you will get strikes to the primary coil / ground rail or if way too small strikes to the secondary coil which might destroy it!

Choosing distance to top winding of the secondary coil

The underside of the toroid should align with the top winding of the secondary coil or be raised a distance at up to secondary coil diameter.

One or two toroids for Tesla Coil

If you want to raise the topload higher above the secondary than the above figure, it will be a good idea to add a second smaller toroid for field shaping. It can also be necessary to add a second smaller toroid if the main toroid is very wide so field shaping around the secondary coil top is weak.

Calculating the capacitance of a sphere

K is the dialetric constant 1.01, R is the radius of the sphere. This formula is using inches for measurements, 10 mm = 25.4 mm. Result is in pF.

$C=\left ( \frac{K\cdot R}{9\cdot 10^{9}} \right )$

Calculating the capacitance of a toroid

D1 is the major diameter of the toroid and D2 is the minor diameter of the ring of the toroid. This formula is using inches for measurements, 10 mm = 25.4 mm. Result is in pF.

$C=2.8\cdot \left ( 1.2781-\frac{D2}{D1} \right )\cdot \sqrt{\frac{2\cdot \pi ^{2}\cdot \left ( D1-D2 \right )\cdot \left ( \frac{D2}{2} \right )}{4\cdot \pi }}$

Breakout point for Tesla Coil

A breakout point should be a good conductor with a even surface to avoid a large corona spray all around the wire, rod or what is used for it.

The tip of the breakout point can be tungsten if heating or even melting damage to the tip is a problem.

The breakout point has to stand out far enough from the very close and heavy magnetic field that is close to the topload surface. At least 10 centimeter would be a good start, even longer and upwards pointing can be used to get arcs further away from striking down in the primary coil, earth rail or just get longer arcs to ground from the bigger distance.

Running a DRSSTC without a breakout point can be very stressful on the IGBTs as the Tesla coil have to build up a large potential on the surface on the topload for it to break down from the very even surface. The IGBT inverter is much happier when it can just keep feeding energy into a arc.

Tales of running a DRSSTC without a breakout point tells that nothing happens until it almost hits full input voltage from f.ex. a variac. Suddenly large arcs will start lashing out in unpredictable and random directions. Half of the time the sparks would either be from topload, racing sparks on secondary or even inside of the secondary.

Construction

The art of making a metal toroid is called metal spinning. A sheet of metal is formed into shape with a metal rod against several different wooden master models mounted in a lathe.

Aluminium ducting is easy to mount around two circular pieces of wood with spacers between them.

Published on: Sep 24, 2015. Updated on October 29, 2021.

11 thoughts on “Topload design and selection for Tesla coils”

1. Roger browne says:

Very good info, My name is Roger Browne 69 years old and would like to build a Testa
coil for the first time no one to help you with and not rich but today I order a new
15000 volts at 30Ma from the USA and I order the secondary I think that it is 18” long
by4 or 41/2” now I don’t know what to use for the top then I came across your article
which is so helpful I will read it again tomorrow it is getting late here so once again
thank you and keep up the good work;
Regards Roger.

2. Hi Roger

It is good to hear that you are taking up the challenge of building a Tesla coil, you should sign up at http://www.highvoltageforum.net and tell us more about your project and problems there, we are many users with good knowledge on Tesla coils there 🙂

Kind regards

3. Justin says:

I used a similar technique with my toroid. A great tip is to wrap it first with drywall mesh tape and then cover it with joint compound, spackling, or similar (as seen in the article above). The toroid is not finished yet. I’d like to add a couple more coats of mud, but so far I am very happy with the results. I can’t wait to sand it smooth and cover it w/ foil tape.

4. Hi Justin

That looks really neat! Having repaired a lot of my own house, I can follow you completely on the drywall material method here. Thank you for sharing. Can I use your picture as an example in the guide? Got a link you want in as reference?

Kind regards

I just want to share this video from another coiler; he shows his own technique for making toroids, using Aluminum tape with great quality, and very smooooth. https://youtu.be/4X2dfQY0ZAg

Thank you for sharing. It is a very nice result and he also put a lot more effort and time into making it smooth than I did. I also used too hard materials and that is key here to make it real smooth.

Kind regards

7. Maycon douglas says:

Hi! I have a doubt. how is the calculation done for a top load of aluminum tube rings? like the one you use in drsstc III.

8. Hi Maycon

You can make an assumption and just calculate it as one big toroid with the parameters of the outer diameters of the total of all the tube rings. You could also calculate it for each separate ring and add them together, I usually add all individual rings in JAVATC when simulating my coils.

Kind regards

9. Patrik says:

Thank you for the work you put to this guide. It realy helped me a lot. I have a question, that may be obvius, but i would rather ask you, since you have a lot more experience. I am building a solid state tesla coil with my friend and I am building the topload with an aluminium air duct and two pieces of wood. My question is, if I can use metal screws inside the topload?
I need to attach a plastic cap to the inside of the topload so that i can atach it to the secondary and Im not sure, if I can use those metal screws.