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RE: New static gap and vacuum motor



Hi Ed,
  My experience is if you got too much air flow, it won't spark. So, if I
got too much air flow, I short a couple of gaps with an alligator clip or
two. Your gap sounds good to me. I have made several RQ type and all work
good. However, I have to clean the darn things frequently. When they  get
loaded up with that "black dust", the coil will only perform for 15-20
seconds before quitting(spark gap is firing, no output). I've thinking about
a Scott gap and lots of air.
											Later,
											   James

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla List [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2000 12:49 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: New static gap and vacuum motor


Original Poster: Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com

I posted the following message last week - and received no responses.  I am
thinking about going with 8 gaps of .050" each for a total of .400".  I plan
to mount the gap sections on 7" square pieces of bakelite, cutting about
1/8"
slots between the gap sections.  Then complete the box so It will be air
tight and mount the vacuum motor on top of the box over a 4" hole.  There
will be 5 copper pipe sections on one side of the box and 5 more on the side
opposite, all connected in series.  I will probably need to use 1.25" dia
copper pipe to make this fit.  They will be about 5.0" long.  Any comments
from those who have made these type of gaps?


Steve Date was kind enough to send me a vacuum motor the other day.  I had
been planning to rebuild one of my RQ cylindrical gaps to use on my 6" coil
powered by a 14.4 kv pole transformer running at about 7 kva.  The
modification was planned to seal off the bottom, cut slots in the sides
between the gaps and install the vacuum motor on the top.  Then I realized I
only have 6 gaps each about .028" wide for a total gap width of about .170".
I think this will severely limit the maximum voltage the caps (.05 ufd
Condenser Products) can charge to and result in much less power in the
primary than I have been running with my async rotary.  My question for the
group is - how wide of a gap do you think I can use and not overvoltage my
C.P. caps rated at 20 kv (in Tesla coil operation).  I found an old
correspondence from C.P. where they state "the capacitor is designed for
maximum of 34 kv peak, including safety".  W.I. Mason, the President,
suggested at the time that I use a maximum of  3/8" to limit the voltage to
31 kv max.

I would like some suggestions on this.  Should I go with his suggestion and
design for 3/8" total gap?  Like 6 gaps of .0625"?

Thanks, Ed Sonderman