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“The heart of the high-voltage generator is a standard flyback transformer transplanted from an old TV set. The globe is mostly vacuum but has a tiny amount of inert gases namely neon and xenon. When excited by the HF-HV electro-magnetic field, atoms of the gas become ionized and cause various beautiful plasma trails to be produced within the sphere. Touching the sphere while operating (safe to do) is exciting because the plasma streams tend to follow your finger tips. ”

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“The HV power supply is a contemporary TV flyback with the internal diode intact. It charges the tank cap directly to 12 KVDC with pulsed DC as we have no filter caps in the cicuit. The flyback is driven by a homebrew transformer constructed from ferrite E-cores. The circuit is oscillated by the familar single transistor flyback method. The feedback winding is on the transformer, not the flyback. The transformer steps up the voltage from 12 Volts to 120 volts to drive the flyback. This is necessary because we are driving the flyback’s original primary.”

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“For best results we recommend using an old black and white television, newer computer controlled (e.g. those with on-screen displays) televisions tend not to work, as they have electronics to detect abnormal activity, and then can shut down the tube, or have it behave erratically.
For those of you who are looking for Wobblevision, this is the same thing, but better. A Wave Vessel has switchable video modes, whereas wobblevision does not. Also, if you are looking for an Analog Visualization Unit, or AVU, this is the right place.”

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“You can build a small Jacob’s Ladder using a high voltage transformer of lower capacity or a DC-AC inverter using a TV flyback transformer. While these would be less dangerous, there is little room for carelessness when working with any type of high voltage device. Even if there is no resistive path, the stray capacitance can permit enough AC current to flow to give you a painful experience!”

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“The first thing I did was take apart the case. My main concern was that I did not want to have to modify the case at all, that meant keeping all the openings and hoping I could reuse them for the different ports. I also didn’t want to have loads of wires popping out the back, hoping to keep the computer as true to its TV roots as possible with only a single power connector in the back.”