Armstrong Science

19/07/2023

It's been a while, but I'm finally back in the Tesla coil game!

22/03/2023

I just finished building my very own electric kiln, and it works like a charm! I tested it last night, and she got up to 1000C (nearly 2000F) in under 30 minutes. I have big plans for this device, including distilling white phosphorus from bone, melting metals for casting, and turning plastic into gasoline! I'll be posting a proper tutorial soon, so stay tuned!

13/02/2023

Time for a Facebook update, wouldn't you say? Man, I can see why so many mid-tier YouTube personalities abandon their FB pages after a while, the real party is in the YouTube community posts...but old habits prevail, so I'll keep trying my best to maintain this page!

For all of my Tesla coil fans, I have some rather big news! Tate from the channel "BackMacSci" will be coming to my hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, to take part in a QCW TESLA COIL DUEL!! For those who aren't familiar with Tate, we are a lot alike (content-wise and as individuals). We've been good friends for quite some time now, and I can't wait to meet him in person sometime in August!

Regarding the QCW project itself, this will probably be one of my most intense builds yet. I struck a deal with the guy behind the channel "All Science", and he's sending me a ton of high-power electronics (including six CM300 IGBTs with a heatsink, four mini-brick MOSFETs, six 3300uF bus capacitors, and four 1uF snubber capacitors). I won't start the build until school ends, but I'm hoping to make two (or three) coils: one "proper" DRSSTC and a low-frequency QCW DRSSTC (and maybe a normal 300kHz QCW, if the power MOSFETs work well). For now, I'm thinking they will all be full-bridges, but I might change my mind since I've never worked with a full bridge before...we'll see! I'll be designing my own driver PCB for this circuit, like usual, and I'm sure I'll run into some new issues. I've never driven IGBTs this big before, and I'll need to figure out how to do primary feedback. Plus, I'll be having a massive learning experience with the QCW buck converter and trying to set up fiber optic controls...yay, all things I've been avoiding cuz they're new and scary, lol. This will be fun! Hopefully everything goes according to plan and I'll be able to give YouTube it's most comprehensive Tesla coil tutorial yet (and an entertaining duel with BackMacSci). Until my next update, LabCoatz out!

08/01/2023

Where have I been? Playing with pyrophoric gases of course! For those who don't know, a pyrophoric material is one which spontaneously ignites in air without an external heat source. In this video, you can see me adding a vial full of aluminum phosphide powder to a beaker full of hydrochloric acid. The reaction produces phosphine: a highly toxic gas which catches fire as soon as it hits the open air! No worries, it all oxidizes away, so nothing poisonous is left in the environment (or my lungs).

So...what do I have going on? Well, with school resuming in one week, I don't have much time left to enjoy myself, so I'm trying as hard as possible to cram as much excitement into this last week of freedom that I can! For those of you following LabCoatz, that means a lot of short-and-sweet chemistry videos. Right now, my primary goal is to get as much content filmed as possible so I can release it all steadily throughout the 16-week college semester. Sadly, this probably means no Tesla coil or high voltage content for a while, since those videos take a lot of time, commitment, and money. Rest assured though, once May hits, I'll try my best to get the flux compression EMP video out, along with a DRSSTC video at some point.

06/12/2022

It's finally finished! After months of work, the musical class-E SSTC tutorial is finally published: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hez-R-WF5P0
Be sure to check it out, it has some of the most beautiful Tesla coil footage I've ever captured. I even colored the sparks with chemicals for this special occasion! The red is from lithium carbonate, yellow is sodium bicarbonate, green is boric acid, and the strange orangy-purple comes from potassium nitrate. Enjoy!

Among solid-state Tesla coils, there is a sort of unspoken tier list of difficulty. At the easy end, you have H-bridge SSTCs and slayer exciters, which can b...

27/11/2022

Coming soon to LabCoatz: 600 joules of pure awesomeness! This is my new 4400V/65uF capacitor bank (sponsored by PCBgogo), and it can dump roughly 4,000 amps (over 15 megawatts) into just about whatever I want with the flip of a switch! It was build for use in my upcoming flux compression EMP project with Teslaundmehr, but let's just say that wasn't my only motivation...it's also amazing at brutally destroying random stuff. In the slow-motion clip below, you can see what happens when I discharge the bank through a piece of graphite pencil lead. In my opinion, it looks like the blast from a high explosive, which kinda makes sense when you consider it's dumping energy equivalent to 140mg of TNT!

Design-wise, it's just ten 820uF/450V capacitors in series with a 9V solenoid-triggered contactor switch I fabricated myself. In reality, the "820uF" caps are more like 650uF caps (probably why I got ten for $35 on AliExpress), so the whole bank measures in at 65uF and 4500V. I charge it up with a 9kV/30mA neon sign transformer using my Variac to limit the voltage to 4.4kV and a 12kV microwave oven diode to give me DC. It takes a bit over two minutes to reach a 90% charge (4.2kV). The discharges alone are pretty loud, kinda like a weak firecracker, but when you put some thin wire across the output, it roars like a 44 Magnum! Aluminum foil is gone in a flash, and stuff like pencil lead or 32AWG wire simply detonates. I'll be doing a full video here soon, so stay tuned for the destruction!

15/11/2022

On November 4th, I went on my very first tornado chase, and last weekend, I finished editing this "documentary" of my little adventure! I know it's not a Tesla coil or chemical masterpiece, but I hope you all still give it a chance and like/share it around.

Regarding my other, apparently more popular content, I am currently planning a few different videos, but here is the general order I'm thinking:

1. Building a large capacitor bank (sponsored by PCBgogo): easy and quick; should be done before December 10th.

2. Playing with a $30,000 x-ray machine (sponsored by Brilliant): also pretty easy, just need a Saturday alone with my Dad to film it; should be done by December 10th.

3. The class-E SSTC video (sponsored by NextPCB, in collaboration with BackMacSci): basically all filmed, but requires a lot of editing and explanation, so I'm waiting until mid-December to finish it.

4. Building a hydrogen-driven flux compression generator (sponsored by Brilliant, in collaboration with Teslaundmehr): requires more time, hydrogen, and the aforementioned capacitor bank, so I'm doing it during winter break and publishing by January 15th.

5. Large-scale DRSSTC build (sponsored by PCBgogo, in collaboration with BackMacSci and Electromagnetic Farce): definitely a big project, may not be fully complete until spring.

6. QCW HFSSTC: smaller and less expensive than the DRSSTC, but might be more complex, and is not currently sponsored, so it's at the back of the waitlist.

7. Real-life arc reactor (with real palladium): it'll happen sometime when I'm bored...

Chemistry-wise, I have a few random ideas, but no major projects underway. I'm sure I'll think of something though, haha!

This video was sponsored by Brilliant! Keep exploring at http://brilliant.org/LabCoatz/. Get started for free, and hurry—the first 200 people get 20% off an ...

30/10/2022

I had a rather productive day today in the filming and photographing department! Below you can see a sample of my new photo collection, which contains some pretty stunning images, if I do say so myself. After retuning the class-E SSTC, I was able to crank her up to about 70V on my Variac (100VDC once rectified) and get some nice, hot CW flames. Of course, I had to try doping the output with chemicals to see what kinds of stunning displays I could produce. My favorite by far has to be baking soda, which gives a vibrant yellow color. Lithium would normally be my #1, but I think the residual sodium kinda washed out the color, so the magenta-red flame was more of an orange. I did get one good lithium pic though, and I think it's my favorite out of any of the pictures below!

With luck, the class-E video will be done in this next month, but we'll see what life has planned!

23/10/2022

I know it's been a while, so here are a few pics of the upcoming class-E SSTC to prove I'm still alive! 😉

23/09/2022

Progress update for the two or three people who still check my page! We are currently on Electra V.3, and so far, things appear to be on track for an October video release. Most of the bugs have been ironed out, and I was able to get a 4" 1.5MHz coil to spout beautiful CW arcs and play crystal-clear audio thanks to ULTRASONIC INTERRUPTION. That's right: with this coil, you can have the low power consumption associated with interruption WITHOUT the loud noise (although the interrupter can be tuned down to 30Hz or so, so you can still get that nostalgic Tesla coil buzz)! My project partner, Tate with BackMacSci, is also working on a version of this device, although I don't know when he'll be done. I still need to assemble my coil into its final acrylic base, and then I should be ready for filming!

In the future, I have a few projects in mind. For one, I really want a 5W blue laser that can incinerate whatever I point it at. Next, part II of the tornado probe saga...but for that, I first need to find a tornado, and school tends to get in the way of that. I also would like to undertake a bunch of random chemistry videos (making sulfur trioxide from acid and bones, making the world's strongest acid, FINALLY isolating sodium...there's a bunch). But at the top of my current priority list: finally collabing with Kyle from Farce. We've kinda talked about doing this before, but this time I'm more serious. He's a great coiler, and I feel like he could be the one...the chosen one to lead me to my greatest creation yet: a REAL DRSSTC! We'll see how it goes though...until next time, LabCoatz out!

15/08/2022

I spent today designing a musical "plasma speaker" type interrupter for my new class-E coil. I tried simulating it online, and it seems to work pretty well (in theory)! Here's a quick screen capture showing it playing an excerpt from a very fitting song, "Ride The Lightning" by Metallica! Ignore the hissing sound in the background, that's just from the computer being pushed to output the audio in a timely fashion, haha!

12/08/2022

Electra V.3 is coming soon! I've been to hell and back trying to design this thing, and I'm not stopping until she's finished. I've tried the design with and without a gate drive transformer (without is FAR better), up to 100V untuned (which killed the TVS), and with several different coils. My best results so far: this 1.2MHz coil, which pumps out a nice 2-3" bushy plasma flame, as seen below. It's not my final secondary...it's too large and it's wrapped on a flimsy paper tube...but it's a start! With luck, I'll be able to finish this baby by the end of August, and hopefully have the video done by early October. College is resuming in about ten days though, so my time will once again be limited. Wish me luck!