The Safety Gap

The Safety gap IS NOT THE SAME as the spark gap!

The safety gap is a basic component used for high voltage Tesla Coils only. It is basically a way to protect all the circuits components from a high voltage feed back. Sometimes a high voltage feed back comes back from the primary coil into the transformer burning it out and blowing out the caps. If the output spark from the coil hit the primary coil then the same would happen but worse. There would be no way to repair it you would need to buy new capacitors and a new neon sign transformer. The safety gap is a basic part that will prevent and feed back or arks from the primary from damaging any of the circuits components.

The safety gap is like a spark gap but there is never a spark going between the three terminals. Instead, if a high voltage is feed back or arks from the toroid, it will trigger the spark gap and both terminals will fire into the middle terminal. The middle terminal is grounded so all the power will be vented to ground keeping the circuits components safe. Just think of it as a spark gap that will only work when there is a really high voltage and when it does all that voltage is send straight to ground.

This component is OPTIONAL in you Tesla Coil; it is not required to run but it is advised that you do use one as a safety precaution.

To make it just put three screws in a line through wood making them relatively close, make sure only the middle one goes through the bottom of the wood. Cover both of the other screws in glue but no the screw head. This will make it so the spark can only ark out of the screw head and not the rest of it. Then just hook the safety gap in parallel with the transformer and hook the middle screw to ground (Preferably to an outside grounding rod). You gap should be good to go.

You can use the depth of middle screw to make the gap smaller or bigger.

Next step: Secondary Coil