Making homemade piezoelectric crystals, testing crystal ignitor from a barbeque lighter, extracting piezoelectric disks from gift cards, buzzers and in general, playing with piezoelectricity.

Rochelle salt crystals - Making homemade piezo crystals

Piezoelectric crystals can be made from scratch using household products found in grocery stores and maybe even your kitchen: baking soda, cream of tartar, distilled water, ...

Where to get piezoelectric crystals

You can buy piezoelectric crystals from a variety of places online, from searching for "piezoelectric" on ebay.com or your country's version of ebay, other marketplaces or commercial manufacturers and retailers.

You can also find a variety of types of piezoelectric crystals in all sorts of things that you can take apart, some of which are shown below.

In the photo below you'll find the following:

  1. Homemade rochelle salt crystal,
  2. piezoelectric igniter from a BBQ lighter,
  3. another piezoelectric igniter from a BBQ lighter,
  4. piezoelectric igniter from a hand lighter,
  5. piezoelectric buzzer from Radio Shack,
  6. piezoelectric disk crystal from a musical gift card,
  7. crystal earpiece containing a piezoelectric disk crystal, used for crystal radios.
A selection of different piezoelectric crystals including a homemade rochelle salt crystal, piezo igniters from BBQ lighters and hand lighters, a piezo buzzer, a piezoelectric disk from a gift card and a crystal earpiece.
A selection of different piezoelectric crystals including a homemade rochelle salt crystal, piezo igniters from BBQ lighters and hand lighters, a piezo buzzer, a piezoelectric disk from a gift card and a crystal earpiece.

You might be able to find a piezoelectric crystal in a microwave oven as well. If your microwave oven makes a beeping sound when food is ready then it may have a piezo speaker inside. If the microwave oven has a dial-type of timer that makes a bell ringing sound then it doesn't have a piezo speaker. On the second half of my page about crystal earphones I show how to get one of these from a microwave oven.

The location of the piezo speaker in the microwave oven.
Piezo speaker in the microwave oven.
The exposed piezoelectric crystal from the microwave oven's piezo speaker.
The piezoelectric speaker.

Below are some webpages where I show examples of taking piezoelectric crystals from things.

Making use of piezoelectric crystals

More topics

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