this simple plasma tube exsperiment ive biult before consists of a few photo flash tubes from the old phased out pocket cameras in australia. now there is 4 tubes but only 2 are from pocket cameras, the other 2 are exenon flash tubes , these 2 were not from any camera ive autopsied, now one of the camera flash tubes is longer than the other.This longest tube i used to form the botton edge of a tryangle ,the 2 rxenon tubes i solder one to each end and bent down to complte the tryangle/then from that corner where the 2 exenon tubes meet and are solderd like the other ,i solder one more camera flash tube. the setup now looks like a tryangle with a tube sticking out one corner .
Now to power them i used a flyback driver circiut, originally a transformer driver circiut used for the vortex canon circiut on carl williams robotic site i think it was, now in the circiut instead of a transformer and the rest of the circiut i stop at that and used a small unusual looking flyback like transformer, that was linked to a flyback , and it had its own hv ouput lead . now withe the tube setup i solderd a wire to one corner and from there to another corner , the flyback or transformer driver circiut itself, i made the following modifications, i changed all the 1n4007 diodes to uf4007 diodes, they are 10 nanosecond high speed diodes if i remember corectly .
Now all the flashtubes have there trigger coil wires removed . now comes the good part, when i fire it up i get arc streamers moveing in the tubes but when i make some adjustments, the moveing arcs suspend , they freeze into the shape i got sine wave shape ,sawtooth shape and a strait line still arc none move unless i adjust the circiut more then ill get a square wave shape nice and still as it holds that shape. when i make another adjust ment the square wave starts untill i re adjust it, then its still. now with the straitline arc i bring a magnet near it and it starts to bend . while makeing adjustments the radio down stairs starts to sound like its being tuned throught the short wave band . and at another point of adjustment it jams the radio completely / every station across the dial is being efected.
Now here comes the wierd part at another point of adjustment , one of the exenon tubes appear to have a light purple glow around it and the transparency seems different and that tube appears to look like its colapseing like its melting and a clear like fluid runing from one end to the other i hope to conduct this exsperiment again soon , i canot properly exsplain it but for a moment i thought the tube was invisible. no damage was done ,after i switched the circiut off the tube i can see more easy again .
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