This blog was home to some exciting high voltage related experiments already. While my time for hobbies is becoming increasingly limited, I recently got a HV-1 high voltage inverter KIT and decided to show it here.

It’s a one transistor oscillator, with a feedback coil in a compact high voltage transformer. It’s identical to the first high voltage inverter I’ve built, except for the flyback transformer. Even with its tiny transformer, this KIT generates enough voltage to power a fluorescent tube or to do an arc of about 5mm in open air:

With the fluorescent lamp, the light was enough to light an entire room, or useful to make a portable lamp. I didn’t have the chance to measure the current drawn from the batteries, but that would be interesting to see too.

The plasma itself was hot, enough to set various materials on fire, indicating a relatively large current on the output.