You do not need salt water to make resistors at that current, ordinary tap water and a tiny bit of salt will work well, just use a pair of old D cell carbon rods, nicely cleaned, as electrodes, and a few grains of salt, in a pyrex beaker, though you will have some stability issues as the water boils. Used to use a 44 gallon drum with 3 steel strips as the dummy load for alternator tests, though there, as the voltage was 115VAC and 100A, there was quite a bit of salt in the drum.
Isn't "ordinary tap water and a tiny bit of salt" saltwater?! (I wasn't talking about seawater, if that's what you thought) My plan is to start with distilled water (filtered rainwater actually), and add very small amounts of salt, and see how the conductivity varies. And not Sodium Chloride - Sodium Carbonate or Copper Suplhate, which won't produce any Chlorine, and which have been used for this. I do like the Carbon rod idea - I was thinking of stainless steel bolts, but corrosion might be a problem with that. I'd probably make it with PVC pipe, where it can be made more physically stable. It doesn't have to run for long, and PVC can handle quite a bit of heat anyway. (I also have a 15KV @70mA beast of a transformer to test with this)
@@bertoid Carbon works best, and if you can get graphite plates even better. Graphite is a common item used in rotary pump vanes, so look out for a Gast oil less vacuum pump repair kit, which often has graphite vanes as part of the kit, in that you get 4 vanes and a pair of bushes as the kit. That is where I got some from, used to electrolyticaly clean rust off stuff with it. Just regular tap water or rain water should be conductive enough, as it will have quite a lot of salts dissolved in it. To make high voltage resistors you normally need triple distilled water to get the conductance low enough to have them act as stopper resistors, as there, for 100kV plus use, you want Gigohm impedance in the water, and plain tap or rain water will merely get you into the tens of kilohm range or so. Rain water picks up a lot of ions coming down, it is suprisingly acidic when you measure it, and you need DI resin to get it to be pure, along with good filters to get all the dirt out. But run it through a new Brita filter cartridge, break it open and toss out the charcoal, it actually contaminates the water more, and simply use the tiny amount of resin beads in there to make the water fill.
@@SeanBZA I already have graphite in various forms. It will be interesting to experiment with various water types. As well as filtered rainwater, I'll also try de-ionized and distilled. And if they are all very conductive, that's partly why I'm thinking pipes (or tubing) to get longer length and higher resistance. But I won't be looking at this until at least next summer, and if interesting, I'll make a video.
You do not need salt water to make resistors at that current, ordinary tap water and a tiny bit of salt will work well, just use a pair of old D cell carbon rods, nicely cleaned, as electrodes, and a few grains of salt, in a pyrex beaker, though you will have some stability issues as the water boils. Used to use a 44 gallon drum with 3 steel strips as the dummy load for alternator tests, though there, as the voltage was 115VAC and 100A, there was quite a bit of salt in the drum.
Isn't "ordinary tap water and a tiny bit of salt" saltwater?!
(I wasn't talking about seawater, if that's what you thought)
My plan is to start with distilled water (filtered rainwater actually), and add very small amounts of salt, and see how the conductivity varies. And not Sodium Chloride - Sodium Carbonate or Copper Suplhate, which won't produce any Chlorine, and which have been used for this.
I do like the Carbon rod idea - I was thinking of stainless steel bolts, but corrosion might be a problem with that.
I'd probably make it with PVC pipe, where it can be made more physically stable. It doesn't have to run for long, and PVC can handle quite a bit of heat anyway. (I also have a 15KV @70mA beast of a transformer to test with this)
@@bertoid Carbon works best, and if you can get graphite plates even better. Graphite is a common item used in rotary pump vanes, so look out for a Gast oil less vacuum pump repair kit, which often has graphite vanes as part of the kit, in that you get 4 vanes and a pair of bushes as the kit. That is where I got some from, used to electrolyticaly clean rust off stuff with it. Just regular tap water or rain water should be conductive enough, as it will have quite a lot of salts dissolved in it. To make high voltage resistors you normally need triple distilled water to get the conductance low enough to have them act as stopper resistors, as there, for 100kV plus use, you want Gigohm impedance in the water, and plain tap or rain water will merely get you into the tens of kilohm range or so.
Rain water picks up a lot of ions coming down, it is suprisingly acidic when you measure it, and you need DI resin to get it to be pure, along with good filters to get all the dirt out. But run it through a new Brita filter cartridge, break it open and toss out the charcoal, it actually contaminates the water more, and simply use the tiny amount of resin beads in there to make the water fill.
@@SeanBZA I already have graphite in various forms. It will be interesting to experiment with various water types. As well as filtered rainwater, I'll also try de-ionized and distilled. And if they are all very conductive, that's partly why I'm thinking pipes (or tubing) to get longer length and higher resistance.
But I won't be looking at this until at least next summer, and if interesting, I'll make a video.
30:36 What a nice High Voltage light bulb 😀
Yes, nice and gentle. I was expecting something a lot more vicious!
Brilliant. Thank you.
Glad you liked!