DIY 10KV High voltage Power supply
Disclaimer : We are playing with the high voltages here, and these details are for knowledge only. I am not at all responsible for the actions you take after you have read this article.
(the pic looks a bit dirty i know, m too lazy to make a proper casing for this supply.)
Its been many days since I have put my hands into high voltages. So i Had this plan to generate around 10KV DC voltage by simplest means.
I had a bunch of High voltage capacitors in my vault so i had this plan to do it using a voltage multiplier grid
Lets See how this voltage multiplier works.
A voltage doubler is a circuit similar to a bridge Rectifier which Rectifies the half cycles into 2 non polar Capacitors and these capacitors in Series gives us doubled output
Like if you give 230V AC to your doubler it will give you
Eout= 230 X 2 X 1.414 = 650 V
1.414 as our 230V is RMS and our caps generally deals in the peaks thus Vpp
Now we have got our doubled Output but hey its still not that huge to be called high voltage. We need Kilo Volts… what to do?
Voltage Multiplier:
Just put another One in front of it and boom another boost. thus you can generate Tremendous amounts of energy by adding the more stages to it. Given diagram shows 3 stages you can add many.
Here is the formula to calculate the output.
Eout= ( 230X2 ) X n X 1.414 where n= number of stages
Capacitors to be used :- Anything greater than 400V value around 0.1uFs
Diodes :- 1n4007 regular rectifier diode is just fine. It has VPP in kilo volts.
I have made 10 stages in my circuit which gives me around 6-7 KVs of volts.
Make it yourself and use it in your applications. Just do remember…play safe
I will be showing some good applications for this supply in next article.
Here are the pics Of the grid i made for reference. Its an old pic and had 10 stages only. New one as 15.
BTW this Power supply do produce some nice arcs around. like very tiny, beautiful, noisy arcs 🙂
Skinny Satan 
Nice Circuit explanations 😛
Thank you 🙂
Sir ,after 2nd stage ie in 3rd stage the voltage is not getting added up
But all the capacitors are charging to VM
I have supplied 50volts 0.1 uf 1kv box type CTR capacitor
Diode 1n4007
Can you tell me what is the problem or which component is creating problem ?
Please comment as soon as possible
Because I am doing final year project
Can you tell me what is happening on the output side of the device. When you say the voltage isn’t adding up after third stage, what is the reading that you are getting after 3rd stage?
Sir , how did you find the 1.414 value from the formula , thank you 🙂 .
230 Volts is the RMS value. The doubler settles at the peak-to-peak value.
Peak to peak value has formula of Vrms = V_{pp} / sqrt(2)
or Vrms = V_{pp}/1.414
Thus V_{pp} = Vrms * 1.414
and V_{pp} = 230 * 1.414