The use of oscillating helical magnetic fields to produce and sustain the toroidal and poloidal currents in a reversed field pinch (RFP) is investigated. A simple physical model that assumes fixed ions, massless electrons, and uniform density and resistivity is employed. Thermal effects are neglected in Ohm's law and helical coordinates are introduced to reduce the number of coupled nonlinear equations that must be advanced in time. The results show that it is possible to produce RFP-like magnetic field profiles with pinch parameters close to the experimental values. The efficiencies obtained for moderate resistivity, and the observed scaling, indicate that this could be a very attractive method for high temperature plasmas. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.134