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Re: RSG problems, help please?

In a message dated 2/15/99 5:42:43 PM Pacific Standard Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes:

> Original Poster: "Dale, Martin" <martin.dale-at-ntu.ac.uk> 
>  
>  Hello all on list.
>  
>  Can anyone help me find out why my new RSG won't work very well?
>  
>  It is an 8 gap serial compound with 8 rotating electrodes passing through
an
>  insulated 6 1/2" disk, and 4 stationary electrodes on each side.
>  
>  All the electrodes are 1/8" Zirconiated Tungsten rods, and the gaps are
>  currently set at 8 to 10 mil (thou' in UK) which is as close as I can get
>  them without the risk of collision.
>  
>  Motor speed max. is 6000 RPM so a max break rate of 800 BPS.
>  
>  All 8 gaps are connected in series with heavy copper bussing between the
>  3/8" brass bolts that hold the electrodes.
>  
>  The problem is that I am getting very poor performance from the coil with
>  the RSG in place of my TCBOR/RQ serial pipe gap.
>  With the RQ gap I normally get 50" or more white hot sparks, but the best
>  the RSG will do is 12" thin wimpish purple ones (very disappointing!) and
>  the sparks at the gaps are also a blue/purple color and not too bright.
>  
>  The coil is a conventional 2 coil inverse cone primary 1/4" copper tube and
>  approx. 5" diam sec.  800t 21gauge. toroid= 2 stacked up to 6" by 25"
>  f res= 220 KHz  Pri. cap= 16nf poly/foil rolled cap.  Supply= up to 16 KV
at
>  250mA from radar transformers.
>  Ballast= gapped variac and resistors (approx. 3ohms)
>  
>  I've done all the obvious checks on tuning etc, but to no avail.
>  The feeble coil output suggests I've got some huge losses somewhere.
>  
>  Anyone got any ideas what might be wrong!
>  It's taken me nearly 4 months to build this thing!
>  
>         Thanks   Martin Dale  TCBON   Nottingham UK
Martin,

If the exact same set up works ok with the cylindrical static gap, I would try
the 
new rotary again with only one set of gaps connected and slow the motor down 
if possible.  800 bps is very fast.  Maybe you are firing the gap before the
cap
gets charged up all the way.  If you can't slow the motor down, maybe you can
try running it with only 4 contacts instead of 8.

Ed Sonderman