Everyone loves to play with electricity and plasma, and [Hyperspace Pirate] is no exception. Inspired by a couple of 40×20 N52 neodymium magnets he had kicking around, he decided to put together a hand-cranked generator and use it to generate plasma with. Because that’s the kind of fun afternoon projects that enrich our lives, and who doesn’t want some Premium Fire™ to enrich their lives?

The generator itself is mostly 3D printed, with the magnets producing current in eight copper coils as they spin past. Courtesy of the 4.5:1 gear on the crank side, it actually spins at over 1,000 RPM with fairly low effort when unloaded, albeit due to the omission of iron cores in the coils. This due to otherwise the very strong magnets likely cogging the generator to the point where starting to turn it by hand would become practically impossible.

Despite this, the generator produces over a kilovolt with the 14,700 turns of 38 AWG copper wire, which is enough for the voltage multiplier and electrodes in the vacuum chamber, which were laid out as follows:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLX_pQbSFFg

These seem to be a very common style of component on Aliexpress and sometimes on eBay too.
It’s a spark ignitor for gas that could be used for cooker, ovens or other applications. Unlike oil igniters or larger scale gas units, it doesn’t have a continuous hot spark, but just pulses low current sparks continuously until the gas/air ratio hits the sweet spot and ignition occurs.

The design is gloriously simple due to the use of a specialist component designed almost exclusively for generating high current pulses used to drive the transformer assembly.

The format of these varies. This one appears to have three separate high voltage secondaries, which raises the intriguing possibility of wiring them in series for a single higher voltage spark.
Other versions have a common ground connection and several outputs referenced to that.

If desired, the PCB could be removed for driving your own custom transformer or pulse coil. Or alternatively you could take inspiration from its design for your own PCB design. It’s a classic circuit.