kastnerd wrote:I got my tinyTesla, I was thinking of applying 5 or more thin coats of varnish. But I want to be sure I mask off enough and not mess up the wire. Its a bit unclear how much loses wire at the top / bottom is needed when doing the first step of varnishing it. Or should it basically be varnished to the edge.
5 thin coats will probably not be nearly enough. I did somewhere around 8 thin coats, and there may as well not have been ANY varnish -- couldn't get a spark off the top until I then added about 4 layers of packing tape. Even that wasn't enough to insulate fully. Varnish until your local hardware store is out of stock!
You only need enough on top to reach up to the very top and into the center nut of the end cap, leave an inch or so so that you can slide the ring terminal over the top bolt.
On the bottom, you only need enough to reach the smaller bottom ring terminal.
A little extra is good in case you have to make adjustments, you can just wind it in the direction of the winding.
I'd strongly recommend you do a bit of a "mock" assembly before you get to far along just to be sure how everything will fit together when finished. And read through the whole manual at least once first. Here are notes on some things that some of us ran into along the way:
viewtopic.php?f=39&t=1849 Read step 12 and 13 all the way through carefully before you varnish, and that should give you a pretty good picture of where things will end up.
IMPORTANT NOTES: in step 12, it never tells you to solder the bottom end of the wire from the secondary coil to the smaller (bottom) ring terminal, but that's what you should do, leaving enough wire (and a little extra) to reach the ring terminal that will be screwed into the base.
ALSO: You should mount the hardware to the heat sink, line the circuit board up with the screw mounts, and temporarily position the pin connector for the primary coil in the circuit board, and then position the secondary coil where the screws will go, because it only all fits together one way, and when it comes time to wind your primary, you'll need to know which slot the connector is supposed to fit through. It would probably help to put a small mark to help you keep this all lined up as you go back and put everything together.