Re: Spark Gap and MMC Questions

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

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

Hi Winston,

At 09:16 AM 2/15/2002 -0800, you wrote:
>Hi Everyone!
>
>	I just ran my coil, and for the first time was able to get some
>meaningful information about it.  For the first time it ran perfectly
>(no caps blowing up, or secondary breakdown).  Anyway, I've been
>noticing that the first spark the coil spits out is always the longest. 
>I tried varying the speed of the vacuum blower on my gap, and found that
>the coil runs best when the blower is wide open at the full 240 volts.
>
>	Could I benefit from a rotary gap?  Building one would be tough, but I
>have several motors that could be modified to make a SRSG.  I could also
>modify one of my vacuum blowers (they run at 20,000-30,000 RPM) for an
>ARSG.  Has anyone tried to use a Dremel rotary tool as an ARSG sparkgap
>motor?

See these links for how to convert a motor.  It is a bit harder than a
static gap but it sounds like you have arrived :-))

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/syncmot.zip
http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/sync_motor.txt

I LOVE rotary gaps.  There are also trigger gaps now too.  I still use
rotaries because I have two real nice ones already ;-)

>
>	Also, could my metalized polypropylene caps be reducing spark output by
>much?  I know they are not very good for TC use, but after tripling the
>runtime on my coil from 5 minutes to 15 minutes I haven't lost another
>cap yet :-).
>

That's good.  Maybe the weak ones have died and the remaining ones are
hanging on.  The all metalized caps (as opposed to foil caps) will probably
perform almost as well.  The only real problem is that they explode now and
then :-))


>	Will polyester film caps work in an MMC?  If so, how well?

Avoid them like the plague!  They run 10X hotter...  Polypropylene is the
ONLY good dielectric for today's MMCs.  The Geek groups caps are very nice
and very cost effective.  You just have to wait in line awhile to get them :-))

Cheers,

	Terry


>
>Thanks,
>
>Winston
>