Tesla Coil Safety: Is It Safe?

[Opus_723]

On several occasions, I've seen the demonstration where a person holds a fluorescent light bulb up to a tesla coil, and it illuminates. And in general, demonstrators don't seem too worried by the sparks generated. But I was looking at this page,

http://www.pupman.com/safety.htm

and was surprised to see the following:

You are literally playing Russian Roulette when you stick a hand held metal rod into the output streamer of your coil running at 3kvA, while standing on a concrete floor! When you start running these kind of power levels (or even less) some coils have a tendency to form a corona or even send a streamer down to their own primaries every once in a while. A grounded strike ring is often added around the primary to try to prevent this self striking streamer from hitting the primary coil and thus introducing a high voltage pulse into the 'bottom end electronics' where it could do damage to components. These strike rails are not 100% effective. The streamer can still, and sometimes does strike a point downstairs that is part of the LETHAL high voltage 60 Hz circuitry. When such a contact is made, any person also connected to a corona/streamer link to the secondary at the same time will, via the ionized air path, become connected to lethal 60 Hz mains current. You could try the trick you described standing on the cement floor in your tennis shoes half a dozen times and live, or be killed the very next time you try it. The fact that the bottom of your secondary is tied to ground will not save you!

Which frankly makes me scared to go near one, and makes me wonder if these people even know what they're doing.

So, question: Is it possible to design tesla coils that do not have this problem, or to perform the above "tricks" safely, or do I need to tackle the next guy who tries to do that trick in order to save his life?

 

[AlephZero]

You shouldn't have to "wonder" if everybody who plays with tesla coils knows what they are doing, unless you are a very trusting or gullible person.

And you personally don't "need" to tackle every fool you meet to teach them the error of their ways, unless you are planning a career as a saint.

Is it possible to design tesla coils that are safe? Sure. Just get some proper education and training in high voltage electrial engineering first, so you do understand what you are doing. But most people don't think that is as much "fun" as just horsing around.

 

[Opus_723]

Well, I wasn't referring to just anybody horsing around. I was mostly surprised because one of the people I've seen do this was someone I would really expect to know what he was doing I'd ask him but I don't know him personally, I just see him around sometimes. Maybe he just had a properly designed coil. It is possible then, to design a coil that doesn't have the specific problem above? I know absolutely nothing about electronics yet, so I wouldn't know. It would be kind of sad if there were no way to do those kinds of demonstrations safely.

 

[Antiphon]

In general it's unsafe. It's not a function of the coils design but of the site.

Think of the streamers as wires made of foil and the coil as a big fan that blows them around. Would this be safe under a power line? No. Would it be safe in a room with metal walls and no electrical service? Yes.

The coil makes threads of plasma that can connect you to a live power line even if you run the coil on a big battery. It's just not safe unless you are encased head to toe in a medevil suit of chain mail that's grounded.