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This project appeared in Make: Vol. 96. Subscribe to Make: for the latest articles.
There’s a new hotness in plasma physics demos. With a sealed vessel of near-vacuum xenon and exactly the right kind of magnetic induction driver, you can conjure a shimmering toroidal halo of stable plasma.
Producing the toroid effect requires high-voltage, high-frequency electronics. Compared to a typical Tesla coil the voltages are a bit lower at 600–1,000 volts, but the operating frequency is much higher at around 10–15 megahertz (MHz).
This fully-open-source design is intended to be as reproducible as possible. I’ve taken a “design for manufacturability” approach, using modern surface-mount components and building functionality into the printed circuit board itself.
Blazing Bagels
What is an induct