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Re: New Coil!

 * Original msg to: Lazer-at-netcom-dot-com
 * Carbons sent to: usa-tesla-at-usa-dot-net

Quoting Stan Harle <lazer-at-netcom-dot-com>:

> Now for the killer question: How'd you make the neat flat coil
> on your video? My guess was that you got it roughed in, then ran
> several drilled  pieces of plexiglass along the windings to form the
> support.  My friend says that you drilled and split the PVC, then
> epoxied or hot glued. Who's right?

Your friend. The conductor is a single 100 foot length of soft copper 
tubing. First I worked it into a rough spiral on the carpeted living 
room floor. It took about three days of wrestling to get a rough shape. 
The actual coil form was made up of long strips of plexiglas (acrylic),
not PVC. I drilled a row of evenly spaced holes down the centers of the
plexi strips, then I cut the strips into two parts (lengthwise), bi-
secting the row of holes across the centers. I used a metal blade on 
the bandsaw for these cuts. I called these plexi strips "combs" because
that is what they resembled. 

At first I made no effort to glue everything down. I used nylon wire
ties to hold the combs together around the coil. The coil was still 
far from looking good, and needed a lot of tweaking to get all of the 
turns evenly spaced. The nylon wire ties could be removed to loosen up
the plexi strips. When loosened, I could ease the conductor around a 
bit, the the combs were reclamped with fresh wire ties when things were 
a little more even. The coil was firing at this point, but was not 
permanently affixed to the base.

It took about three months before the coil was trained well enough 
that I risked permanently bonding things together with epoxy. I used
a slow cure epoxy because of the size and complexity of the work. One
pair of combs at a time were freed of the wire ties and well bedded 
in epoxy on all contact points (both around the conductors and on the 
coil base). The combs were weighted and clamped in place until a full 
cure was obtained, then I went to the next pair. The last two pairs of 
combs were epoxied simultaneously.

The end result was a nice even flat sprial coil that looks good, works
great, and can hang on the wall like "art" when not in use. This coil 
had more than a few hours spent on the design, and many more hours
that went into the actual construction. I feel the results are worth
it.

Richard Quick
... If all else fails... Throw another megavolt across it!
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12