Marx Generator

These are some pictures of the Marx Generator I am working on. The 40Kv Capacitors were bought on eBay and are made by Sprague. I finally got it to resemble a working Marx Generator setup, but it took a few tries (about 4) The descriptions for the images are below each set of images.

Marx Generator

The Above two pictures show the general design of the Marx Generator, the inductors were too small and didn't work, so I replaced them with resistors which were way to small (trying to be cheap, but gotta do this on a budget) :) When I took these pictures, spark gaps were not installed yet. Once I compelte the system and have it looking nice I'll take some good pictures of it. Specifications are on the bottom of the page.

Marx Setup

As you can see in the picture above I used tiny little resistors.. I didn't really expect this to work, but I thought it was worth a shot anyways.

Marx Generator Malfunction

Bleah, nasty arcover on the resistors and all caps firing through one gap. :P

Marx Generator

Hey, this looks more like it! About this time I remembered that I had some 10kV / 50MegOhm resistors sitting in a box somewhere, so I dug them up and put them onto the setup. And what do ya know! This is a work in progress however, I'll update as I get more pictures... Please pardon the mess on the table, there's no excuse other than I was eager to get this working and not about vacuming up sawdust. :) The resistors are the black things on the right hand side of the structure. They are about 1" wide by 1/3" and about 3mm thick.

Specifications:

Capacitors: 40,000 volt / 570 picoFarads

Resistors : 10,000 volts / 50 Meg Ohms

Spark gaps : As of 03/13/2001 bare copper wire -- This will soon be small metal sphere electrodes to reduce corona loss

Input Voltage : As of 03/13/2001 18,000 volts at 1ma from monitor HV driver (driven by 24 home built PSU)

Output Voltage: As of 03/13/2001 Uknown, but fairly low due to corona leakage from sharp points on spark gaps and primary discharge terminals.

Structural Material : Plexiglass/perspex/acrylic sheet cut and drilled.

---This page will be updated as I make modifications to the Marx ---