Re: air ionization and also balancing chokes

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi David,

I would try to put a volt meter across the variac outputs and try to line
them up so they put out the same voltage.  If they are made well, you
should be able to match the voltages up pretty closely which may be all you
need.

Smoking brushes is "bad"!  But it shows the voltages are pretty out of
whack and some simple alignment of the variacs so they work right together
may do wonders.

Cheers,

	Terry 

At 08:34 PM 2/12/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>Hey all,
>
>I just wanted to share an observation that I have recently made 
>that I'm sure is nothing new, but I thought that I would throw it 
>out for comments :-) I've noticed after running my "big pig" coil
>system in my garage that my x-ray tranny powered Jacob's 
>ladder will self start at a somewhat lower setting on the control 
>variac. I'm sure the coil is adding extra ions to the air inside the 
>garage which is causing a noticably lower breakdown voltage
>for the Jacob's ladder at its 7.5" minimum clearance. Yep, that's
>right, 7 1/2" is the MINIMUM spacing of my Jacob's ladder rails
>so that's easily in excess of 100 kV just to get the thing started.
>That's what you can do with a decent-sized x-ray tranny, heh
>Duck? ;-)
>Anyway, I have two GE 280 volt, 30 amp variacs paralleled to 
>control this x-ray tranny beast and they work good but I now
>need to build a paralleling choke to keep from shorting the 
>variacs. I don't have any problems with this unless I turn the 
>variac(s) all the way to one side or the other (minimum or max-
>imum voltage output). Then the brushes and/or the pig tails that
>connect to the brushes start smoking :-O Anyway, I know dis-
>cussions on how to make a homemade paralleling choke has 
>been covered on this list before, but at this time, I can't seem
>to locate any of them :-( If anyone could point me in the right di-
>rection to obtain this info, I would most appreciate it :-)
>
>Sparking in Memphis,
>David Rieben
>