Experiments on the edge of reality  
 
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My 75 kV dental X-ray transformer. It has internal shorting, which wasn't all that great for the project, but its still can put out enough juice to get it running.   Here's the plate of the transformer if anyone has any information or wants to try this at home...I could find little to no information on high voltage DC transformers as is...   My trusty variac. If you are going to play wih high voltage, invest in one of these. It will probably save your life on multiple occasions. This one is my trusty 10A STACO.   Here's the basic setup as seen in my kitchen. I put board down as extra insulation. It always helps to be safe. Its good to note I don't run it like this.
 
     
Going against everything that little lightning bug from the cartoons told me as a child, I add water to a high voltage setup. It's important to fill the water very close to the top, otherwise impurities in the glass and air will cause a spark.   Here's how I actually run the setup, standing over by the variac and pulling the negative, grounded side of the glasses apart to make the bridge. It's good to be far from the scary positive side.   After a few kV, water starts to jump out of the glasses and flow between them. This is at about 50kV, and due to internal shorting and sparking, we see vibrations reflecting that in the water. Its actually pretty cool.   Here's the bridge after being pulled apart a little bit. The bridge can only be pulled so far apart due to the shorting, even at really high voltages. You can see the internal shorting in the pulse of water going across the bridge.
 
     
Rick pulled out his fancypants camera and shot these awesome shots, and I figure this is the most important part of the project, so I'm putting up more shots of it.   Here's the advantage to the telephoto lens and tripod: awesome closeup shots of the water jumping out and flowing. It always looks fantastic when it starts.   This was a pretty spectacular bridge for a bit, nice and thick before the internal shorting caused it to drop. I may just need to look at the rectifier inside and replace some diodes.   A closeup of that bridge before it dissappeared. Note again the turbulence in the water that is directly related to the internal problems of the transformer I was using.