"Marx generator kills dudes who want huge sparks and thus nobody should build it" :-)
Marx generator is generating very high voltage pulses with a huge currents. It was inventer in 1924 by Erwin Marx (not to be confused with Karl Marx).
It consists of a large number of capacitors, which are
charging in parallel and discharged in series. The the capacitors
charges from high voltage power supply until flashover occurs at the lowest spark gap. This will increase the voltage
accross next spark gaps, which also ingite and so on, until all the spark gaps are ignited. Now
capacitors are connected in series and at the output the very high voltage pulse appears. Ignited spark gap
has a very little resistance and the charging resistors have no effect at that moment.
Lowest spark gap should have slightly smaller distance of electrodes, to set fire at the
first. You have to experiment with the distance. Pulses have a frequency of about 1Hz.
Resistors may have 100k to 2M2, capacitors 1nF or more.
Resistors must withstand high voltages. My generator is supplied by voltage of 12kV and a has
20 floors, so it makes almost 240 kV voltage and discharge more than 20 centimeters long. Current is
maybe one thousand amperes and pulse discharge are therefore very noisy. Lowest spark gap has
gap of about 3 millimeters and the other 4mm. When operating the generator
generates electromagnetic pulses and sometimes the electrical appliances switch on and off by itself occurs, CD player skips,
digital clock resets, the computer restarts, radio
changes stations, digital camera shoot by itself and fluorescent lamps also flash.
