Revision 2

The machine has been cleaned of all the carbon from the accident and re-painted. It's now ready for re assembly.

The Trigatron had over 100 shots on it so I decided to pull it apart and see what was going on inside before I put everything back together.

You are looking inside the Trigatron at the HDPE liner that surrounds the trigger electrode. Notice the strange pattern which has been deposited on it. Wiping the liner with a paper towel removed half of the deposits and left the towel with a green residue on it.

There was some wear on the solid electrode although it was mostly pitting. The abuse this electrode took left its surface marked with an interesting array of colors.

The trigger (aka - Sparkplug) shows deposits of brass on its tip. These deposits look like tiny beads of brass.

Lexan blast shields were added to the sides and over the top of the contactors. In the event of an arc-over this should help direct the blast away from the operator and contain some of the exploding wire fragments.

The HV wiring was cleaned up and routing carefully redesigned to prevent voltage stresses wherever possible. HV lines were all double insulated and the connections potted in silicone. Ground wires were triple insulated and routed clear of HV wires.

Here it is ready to be tested.

First quarter from the Rev2 machine.

I would occasionally see sparks when the machine fired and I thought they were just escaping from the seams in the containment box. As I was reviewing some video shot by G4TV I realized that the arcing was coming from the containment but from a metal support directly adjacent the capacitor. The amazing thing is the cap and steel support are both tied together mechanically and electrically only a few inches away from the arcs. How can this be developing a potential high enough to arc??? More to come...

And after all that work it deserves a nice new cover to keep it clean and protected.

In January, 2005 the machine started receiving
Media Attention