The secret to the build is the flyback transformer. A household staple during the era of CRT televisions, these devices can still be readily found online or even salvaged from a broken TV. We’d recommend searching eBay for new old stock (NOS) transformers rather than risk getting blown through a wall while poking around in an old TV you found on the side of the road, but really it all depends on your experience level with this sort of thing.
In any event, once you have the flyback transformer in hand, the rest of the build is very simple. [Jay] demonstrates how you can determine the pinout for your transformer even if you can’t find a datasheet for it, and then proceeds to assemble the handful of ancillary parts necessary to drive it. Housed on a scrap of perfboard and mounted to a piece of plastic to keep stray objects away from the sparky bits underneath, this little power supply would be a reliable workhorse for anyone looking to start experimenting with high voltage. Perhaps an ionic lifter is in your future?
Readers with a photographic memory may recall that [Jay] used this same diminutive power supply in his recently completed water-based Marx generator.
