[Thor’s] hammer, Mjolnir, is quite freaking awesome. It can only be chosen up by [Thor], he can utilize it to fly, as well as most likely the coolest part, it can summon lightning. After watching the very first movie, as well as goofing around with the guys at ArcAttack, I had this concept that I might stuff a small tesla coil into a mjolnir as well as end up with a truly awesome prop.

At this point, I had to make a decision. I was either going to go portable as well as online with little arcs, or make this a stationary piece as well as hide a giant tesla coil in a base. It would have bigger arcs, however I couldn’t bring it around.  While I may re-visit the stationary version at some point, I eventually decided I wished to be able to roam around as well as play with this thing.

I had seen some videos of [Staci Elaan] showing off her battery-powered coils as well as I truly liked her results. I figured, with her experience, she might most likely do a much better task than I might on getting the most bang out of a little package.  She was happy to be included as well as provided a little 12v powered coil for me to work with. I should likewise point out that the coils [Staci] makes are usually contributed to academic groups. This lady is awesome.

She had developed this huge flat head on it, with the preliminary plan being that it would be the front “face” of the hammer. It didn’t truly work out that method though. I ended up having to boost the size of the head a bit as well as modification the positioning of the coil. I experimented with different kinds of foam as well as you can see in the “making of” video what I lastly ended up using.  the blue insulation board you see in the photos melted method as well easily.

After the hammer was all constructed, as well as prepared to film, we shipped it to California.  As you may know, Hackaday is linked to a studio there, now called inside.com. When it arrived, it had experienced a small bit of damage as well as the arcs were a bit smaller. They had gone from approximately 4 inches down to perhaps 3. We filmed a few videos as well as had a ton of fun. Unfortunately, I discovered a month later that all the footage for [Thor’s] hammer was lost.

I had them ship the hammer back to me in Missouri, as well as this time around it was extremely damaged when it arrived. I customized the style a bit bit, re-assembled it, as well as tested it out. The arcs were still approximately 3″ when going to one more piece of metal as well as I was lastly going to be able to share this project.  I cobbled together a quick costume out of a t-shirt, some foam board, as well as hot glue as well as now you see the result!

For those who would like to discover more about the coil itself, you can discover the circuit as well as an entire lesson on solid specify coils here(pdf 8MB).

Lets jump into some pictures!

[Staci] supplied photos of the different parts of the coil during construction. keep in mind, she didn’t have a great deal of time as well as I asked her to get this done quite quickly.

The boost converter:

The controller card:

The HV coil:

RF inverter:

This was all at first going to in shape in the handle, however I provided her the wrong dimensions. It ended up being millimeters as well wide.  It now resides in the head of the hammer with the coil.

The preliminary style that was method as well melty as well as didn’t work extremely well:

The final design, huge however functional:

snapped off in shipping

more even discharge with these 4 points

old vs new

sluttprodukt

the bare foam head

before paint as well as leather

The whole time, I was scared somebody else would beat me to the punch. It is such a simple idea. I believe a stationary one that might do arcs of a number of feet would be fun to see as well, however I’ll have to save that for one more time.