I’ve made a little progress with the mini-coil. I have two flyback drivers up and running. Each circuit fits nicely inside a 2″ ABS cup potted with silicone, now dubbed the hockey puck of DOOM.
One flyback charges a capacitor bank, and is held open by the trigatron. I’m not sure when these actual trigatrons where manufactured, but they’ve been available since the 1940s.
The trigatron acts as a very quiet, easily controlled spark gap switch. When the second flyback turns on, it closes the switch, dumping the charge in the capacitor bank across the primary of the Tesla coil.
When actually operating, both coils will charge the bank in parallel, and the trigatron will be fired with very precise timing using a solid state ignition coil.
