You should be careful to keep sensitive electronic equipment away from plasma balls, plasma discs, Tesla coils, etc., including people with pace-makers.
Some of the technical details I said mightn’t be exactly correct, so let me know if I’m a bit off here and there. Although I don’t want to get this page overly complicated.
Come back again soon! Hopefully I will have a few more goodies to show on here eventually. Although these things cost a bit of money, so don’t expect more than maybe 1 extra every 1 or 2 years.

Be sure to check out my Plasma Thing program for Mac OS X (PowerPC) on The Downloads Page. (A Windows version is available by request.)

If you’re looking for a plasma ball / other shape, there are plenty of cheapo ones on eBay & Amazon’s web sites, but if you’re aiming for something a lot better, the manufacturers below do the best quality.
• Aurora Plasma Design — These guys are one of the best for consumer priced plasma balls. They’re based in Canada, and only send their products to their own country, and to America. If you really want one though, you can arrange it for a courier service to collect a product from their warehouse and send it to you, but be prepared to pay a lot of money! They reckon about the same price as the product itself. That said, I’m aiming to obtain one of their junior balls in green, in 2025, hopefully with transport by somebody like DHL, but I’ll have to see what they say.
Aurora do a range of colours by using different mixtures of gas, and tend to bring out new models every few years or so. They sometimes have discounted products too, where the manufacturing wasn’t quite up to their own standards. They also have plasma balls in a few sizes, depending on what you can afford.
• Strattman Design — Top of the line plasma balls at museum grade quality. They’re based in America, and will send worldwide. Choose what gas you want, and even glass shapes. Power supplies are custom made to suit, and they also refill broken plasma balls. If you have the money, they are the best, but they aim most of their products for museums and the like, who can afford a few grand. From what I gather, Wayne Strattman was the chap who made the plasma discs for Star Trek: First Contact. If spending $10 000 is just a drop in the bucket for you, then look no further.
• Phantom Dynamics — Another American company with some serious quality. They also do tubes, LASERs, mirror balls and more.
• Tesla Coil Pro — A Russian company based in St. Petersburg. These guys make a broad range of products, a lot of which are hand made, including electrode-less plasma balls, with your choice of colour. (This means they have no internal electrode. You’re supposed to hold them near a Tesla coil.) They also have “bagel-gens”, which are a special type of plasma lamp with a bagel shaped ring of plasma and they do their own glass work too. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get them to respond to my e-mail, so I’m not sure what’s up there.

If you know of any other quality manufacturers, especially here in Australia, let me know.

This is sort of plasma lamp related, because you can use it to run electrode-less plasma balls. I got one of these off eBay from China for $80.60 (with the postage cost). I’d seen other people with them, and decided to get one myself, especially since I’m aiming to get a couple of Tesla Coil Pro’s mini plasma balls. This is really intended for you to lay gas filled items directly on the glass top. They also warn you not to touch it, as it can burn your skin, so this is not something you’d want to have small kids playing with. You should also keep sensitive electronic devices away from this, such as cameras, watches, calculators, etc.
I was lucky to get this one, because I ordered a white one from another seller in China, and they told me that the manufacturer had run out parts to make them! Then I asked another seller, and they said they were out of stock too. It’s a wonder they still had them listed. Anyway, a 3rd seller said they had one in black, and I said I didn’t care what colour it was, so I made the order. It came quicker than expected too. I ordered it on the 2nd of April, and it arrived on the 15th. They also had a Tomb Sweeping Festival in China, which I didn’t know about, so there was a slight delay, but even so, it was quicker than something else I ordered.
The power supply has an output of 24 V at 3 A, which is a bit unusual, so it better not conk out. The cord lengths on it are really short as well, so you’ll need an extension cord. Not only that, but it has an American style plug for some reason. Although I think the Japanese also use this prong format. I would’ve figured that the Chinese would use their own plugs, which are the same as we have in Australia, so it was a bit of a surprise to get a plug that has nothing to do with either country. So you’ll want to make sure you have an adaptor. Luckily it covers a voltage range from 110 V up to 240 V, so there’s no worry there. The low voltage side of the power supply has a in-line switch, (like you’d see on a lamp,) as there are none on the Tesla coil box part.
The bottom of the box is like a metal panel, and I reckon it’s probably a heat-sink as well, for whatever component they used. I didn’t have it on for very long to see how hot it got. There’s also a blue L.E.D., which is thankfully more dull than some of the pictures I saw on the Web. As a nice little bonus, you also get 2 neon bulbs! And the instructions mention these as well, so you can test the thing out. I got a plain orange one and a green one. So that was really good. You could just hold them in the bag and put it near the top, and they’d light up. You want to come in pretty close as well — like about 5 cm or so away, but they light up pretty brightly. You might be able to make some kind of foil covered panel to lie close to the top of this to draw the power out to other items as well. I tried it with my foil covered cardboard with the neon bulbs and it worked, but you do need to bring it in to that close range.
So I would recommend one of these if you want a compact Tesla coil for lighting up gas filled balls, tubes etc., and where you don’t need something extremely powerful that gives off sparks, which this doesn’t.

Videos
(Externally hosted)

• Electrode-less krypton plasma balls by Tesla Coil Pro
• Somebody’s huge plasma lamp collection — I think I counted about 54 working ones.
• New Homemade Plasma Balls — I seem to keep losing this link! So hopefully it will stay here. There are some really cool electrode-less balls in this. Be sure to check out the fuzzy white one. This would be the sort of direction of plasma lighting, kind of like the thing that Nikola Tesla was aiming to do, or had done, from what I read. (These are by Tesla Coil Pro.)
• Intense Red Custom Plasma Ball — Another 1 by Tesla Coil Pro, which I saw a few years back. I wonder what’s in it. You don’t usually see red plasma balls. I don’t suppose it’s arsenic. I might be way off course there. I know they use that for red L.E.D.s, but it might not work the same.
• Xenon BagelGen dealies — Also by Tesla Coil Pro. One of these would be sweet, but they’re pretty expensive. You won’t find these on eBay or Amazon. Or if you have, tell me otherwise!
• Plasma Tubes Installation At Sevcabel, St Petersburg — These beggars look really big!
• Giant 80 cm green plasma disc by Tesla Coil Pro — They were right! This is amazing! Check out the variations too! They must be changing the frequency & voltage or something.
• Plasma Glassware (Also by TCP) — Plasma drinking receptacles. The American company, Can You Imagine, did a “Plasma Mug” as well. That was its actual name.
• Green Plasma “Mushrooms” — Tesla Coil Pro / Zerg Labs do more crazy and amazing stuff with this giant plasma ball, this time making mushroom shaped plasma. Some of it looks like something out of a movie about ghosts. This is really worth a squizz.
• Bright Yellow Plasma Ball by TCP. This seems to have some kind of solid substance in with it as well, which probably explains the colour.
• Tesla Coil Pro’s Plasma Art Showroom — Ooooh! What a line up of goodies! Including flat panels, tubes and balls.
• Emerald Fury Plasma Globe (Aurora Plasma Design)
• Promethean Fire Plasma Globe by Aurora Plasma Design — This video also explains changes over a period of more than 200 days, and how this plasma ball will start from being quite frantic looking, then slowly change to a more mellow look.
• Plasma Pipes: Light Up Your Glass! — This video seemed to be gone, and now it’s back. So I don’t know. You might want to try the link for yourself. This was a company that did plasma lamps out of weird looking glassware, like bongs and stuff. Their web site has gone though.
• Green Plasma Globe — A video by ILuvBadgers from 2010. This looks really good. I wonder what’s in it and who made it. It's like the green lamps done by Tesla Coil Pro. Much more rich in green than Aurora’s balls. This looks like a real winner of a plasma ball! When it’s toned down to subtle, it looks amazing as well. Like the mushrooms video above. It must have the same chemicals in it.
• Multicoloured Plasma Ball Set by Tesla Coil Pro / Zerg Labs — Wow! These look so great! Especially the greeny / turquoise electroluminophore dealie bulb. (That’s the one which looks like it has a glowing powder in it.)
• 10 Litre Flask Plasma Balls by TCP. The 1 at the front, the green 1 to the right, and the cyan one that’s kind of in the middle are definitely the most gorgeous looking ones in this.

If you want to try something else with your plasma lamps that looks rather cool, and potentially magical to other people, here’s a small project you can assemble with relative ease. Get a good size piece of cardboard, about 33 cm × 17 cm or so. I just used a “flap” piece from a box. Next, wrap a sheet of aluminium foil around the top portion of the cardboard, covering about 80% to 90% of the surface area. You will need a gap at the bottom of about 2.5 cm or maybe a touch more. Stick down the foil with some sticky tape, but leave an exposed area on the back. Puncture the cardboard at the bottom using a pin or needle with the holes spaced at 5 mm apart. This is where your L.E.D. will go through. Your L.E.D. needs to connect to the large area of foil, and it’s best if you can solder on some wires at this point. If you don’t have a soldering iron and solder, you may need to wrap some wire around the connections to the L.E.D instead. I used a little socket for mine, but this is something you may not have. From the other end of the wires, trim off about 2 cm of insulation, and if possible, coat them with solder to prevent corrosion, epecially on copper wire. Once done, put one of the exposed ends of wire on the large area of foil at the back, and stick it down with some tape. (Regular solder won’t really stick to foil.) Get ready to add another piece of foil at the bottom in the exposed area of cardboard that’s big enough for your thumb, but do not let it touch the large area of foil at all. See if you can put the other exposed wire onto the cardboard, with this smaller piece of foil on top, then tape it down firmly. You will need the top side of the foil exposed though! So don’t tape over it. Once done, you should have something that looks like my pictures. Now, hold onto the small piece of foil with your thumb on top, and bring the end with the large amount of foil up to your plasma lamp. Don’t get in too close though. You should see the L.E.D. come on from a distance. If you bring it too close, it may be too much for the diode, and it could knacker it. I did this myself, so be warned! A safer alternative is to use a neon bulb, which has a much higher voltage rating. (Around 70 to 90 V.)
What’s happening, is that your body is partially earthed, so it has no voltage compared with the alternating levels coming from your plasma lamp. You’re basically becoming like one side of a large capacitor. The high voltage field around the lamp, and its internal transformer, which is like a mini Tesla coil, is the other side of the “capacitor”. This is what causes the L.E.D. to light up, and the same applies to fluorescent tubes, neon bulbs and so on. To anyone who doesn’t realise what’s happening, it can look quite magical to have a L.E.D. suddenly light up which doesn’t appear to be connected to anything but your body.
If you have a bi-colour L.E.D., which changes colours depending on its polarity, try connecting this up, and it should appear to be showing both colours at once. This is because of the high frequency AC from the plasma lamp.
It goes without saying: Don’t try touching the foil to any high voltage sources, such as that which comes into your house / other building. But if you have a Tesla coil on its own, you could try this experiment in the proximity of it.

In this section, I will try to make a list of some classic plasma lamps, most likely gathered from ones that crop up on eBay. The intention being, to preserve the knowledge of the existence of various models. Especially for new collectors. Prices are always in Australian money, since this is an Aussie site, but I think most of the items mentioned will be American. Let me know if I have any severe boo-boos! Contact me also if you have pictures and suggestions.

In this table, I will try to list various elements which produce different colours in plasma lamps. If you’d like to suggest stuff to add, please contact me, as help in this area would be great. That said, there may be more than one element that makes a similar colour, so I will add multiple options for that. The base noble gas may vary as well, so if you know of dramatic changes between the likes of xenon, argon, krypton and so on, just let me know. In the case of where it’s unknown how to make a certain hue, I will leave that blank. None of these colours are from my own experiments, as I don’t have the equipment to do any of this. They’re all just observed from other people’s videos and pictures. You should assume in the case of where I only list an element which is usually solid, that it’s mixed with a primary gas of some kind. Lastly, if you know that any of the elements listed can be dangerous, such as giving off X-rays, tell me this too.