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130kW Coil -- Oh No!




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From:  Greg Leyh [SMTP:lod-at-pacbell-dot-net]
Sent:  Tuesday, February 03, 1998 9:43 AM
To:  Tesla List
Subject:  Re: 130kW Coil -- Oh No!

Russ Thornton wrote:


> Sounds like positive progress is being made.  May I make a, perhaps
> naive, suggestion on the rotary gap.  Would it be possible to take the
> stationary and moving electrodes and place each in separate molds then
> filled with a material like Lucite.  Then machined down so that they are
> essentially just cylinders and when rotated against each other will,
> aerodynamically, appear like two flat disks.  I am ignoring the
> centrifugal forces and heat effects for simplicity but it was just a
> thought.  What do you think?


Sounds good, although we can't really ignore the centrifugal 
forces or heat effects, or the impact that any shrouding has 
upon disassembly or adjustments.

Owing to the extent of the arcs off the trailing edge of the 
electrodes, no physical materials may come closer than about
5/8" to the electrode mating area.  Unfortunately, the span-
wise vortices generated off the electrodes' trailing edge have
feature sizes less than 5/8", so it is not possible to place
shrouding close enough to the electrodes to significantly spoil 
the vortices and still avoid the blistering heat of the the arcs.

Any shrouding near the moving electrodes must also be able to
support at least 2000 times its own weight, as the centrifugal 
forces are upwards of 1500 g's.  The weight distribution of
the shrouding must be tightly controlled as well, to preserve
the dynamic balance of the rotors.

Filling the volume around the electrodes with a solid medium
may make for a difficult or a very messy repair job, if any 
disassembly is required.  I am trying to keep the disassembly
of this system as simple as possible, given its highly
experimental nature, and just throw more power at it 
whenever practical.  Hopefully once the porcelain is out of
there the supports will be sufficiently robust.


-GL