Wimshurst whimsy?

[Paul C. Dickie]

Does anyone here know whence one might obtain plans and/or parts for a Wimshurst machine?

(And, yes, I did look on Google first...)

[MrCheerful]

Read homemade lightning by r a ford, it includes how to make your own Wimshurst machine.

MrCheerful

[Wanderer]

Didn't look very hard then, did you? :-))

[Paul C. Dickie]

I probably used the wrong keywords. Now all I'd need would be the centrifugal switch...

[Andy Dingley]

Find your pair of glass disks. Then the rest is easy.

[Steve Taylor]

A decent glass merchant will band saw the disks easily enough - I recently had some 10mm disks around 150mm in diameter which were round within 1 mm.

Edging them properly round is also pretty easy, but rather slow.

Steve

[derek]

The one we had at school had perspex disks

Once you've got the dead cat.

DG

[mike ring]

"Paul C. Dickie" wrote in news:fAtyktJW7k+ $ [e-mail]:

Don't be such a wuss - build a Van de Graaf

mike r

[Niall]

Drainpipe Marx Generator.

[Dave Liquorice]

Or a nice chunky tesla coil.

[Paul C. Dickie]

In article , mike ring writes

I did wonder about that, but concluded that the Wimshurst design would look better on the exercise bike than would a Van de Graaf, even if the latter would be more efficient. I'd not need to generate long sparks, when relatively short sparks should be enough to encourage the user to pedal faster...

[geoff]

John Jessop's just sent me a nice little toy to repair

It's an ignition box for an oil burner - 8kV at 16mA - Van der Graaf generators are for girls (except for the one they used to have at Daresbury)

[Andy Dingley]

Jacob's Ladder then

-- Inbreeding - nature's way to ensure you always have enough fingers to count all your cousins.

[Andy Dingley]

When I was a kid, I read a series of library books on building your own physics experiments. Anyone remember the titles ? - I'd love to find them again.

I built a Wimshurst, VdG and a Wilson cloud chamber. They worked too, apart from the VdG which never tracked the belt for long enough to build up a good charge - needed a crowned pulley.

Some years later I built a nitrogen laser based on the SciAm design, with the transverse discharge from a Blumlein generator. There's most of a Tesla upstairs, waiting to be assembled. Ikea sell lovely secondary formers as the legs of their kids' "Mammutt" (?) chair and table - polypropylene with a useful taper.

-- Smert' spamionam

[Dave Liquorice]

Oil igniters are fun, I'm sort of half waiting for the burner here to fail so I can "play" with the ignitor and a couple off wire coat hangers in V formation. B-)

Bet its still only went splat splat splat rather than BUZZZZZZTT. B-)

[Andy Hall]

I think that you might mean "The Book of Experiments" by Leonard de Vries. There were three or four volumes of these over the years - I think the first one was in the late 50s.

I can remember, at the age of about 8, wanting to take books about how to build radios from the library. The librarian obviously thought that these were beyond me and tried to sell me on Famous Five or something like that. So I opened the book and explained to her how a crystal set worked. The following week she brought an old one in that she claimed wasn't working and asked me if I knew how to fix it. This set had a number of coils that you had to plug in to listen to different bands but she didn't understand that. Anyway, I got it working and she would listen to the Archers on it.

After that, she'd even buy in titles that I wanted.

Come on, own up - you're making an electric chair, aren't you :-)

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

[geoff]

Yup - now where's a coat hanger when you need one

[geoff]

Standing about 200 ft high? no ... this was a serious machine

[Andy Dingley]

No, I've still got that around somewhere.

These were large hardbacks, with red or yellow coloured bands on the cover and a big B&W photograph. They were distinctly more serious then Leonard de Vries and very '50s in style. Lots of "Experimental Equipment for the Keen Schoolboy" atmosphere. Everything seemed to be made from goldfish bowls, honey jars and lashings of Aquadag.

Anyone else remember the series of radio-building books at that time, with a couple of early geranium transistors and some of those colour-coded plug-in coils that were sold in their own aluminium screening can ? Colour photo illustrations too, now there was posh.

Nowhere to put it - I've got the hydraulics off a dentist's chair cluttering up the shop at the front, and the ejector seat (MB H7) is still sat out in the conservatory waiting for me to weld up a swivel base.

-- Smert' spamionam

[steve]

You should have an open day sometime - a UK,DIY visit ???? You have some very neat projects.

Steve