My friend Charles Brunn and I built this machine in 2006-7. It is built using fairly
simple tools: router, drill press, table saw and hand tools.
We used 1/4" copper tubing and fittings, which gave us strong, smoothly curved
components to work with. We bought some of the hollow copper balls, and some we
made ourselves. The Leyden jars are not fixed, and can be charged, and picked up
to carry the charge over to other equipment. The other special feature is the brass
upholstery nails in the sectors. The reason for those is that the brushes on the
neutralizing bars must make contact with the sectors on the disk, though the brushes
on the high-voltage pickoff brushes do not need to touch the sectors. Brushes touching
the copper foil eventually scratch the plexiglass disks, and nick the edges of the
foil. In this design, the neutralizing brushes touch only the raised uphostery
nails, not the foil, and the HV brushes are positioned opposite the flat copper foil
sections.
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