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Beating a Dead Horse - Neons
I think I'm more confused now than I ever was about protecting my
neon transformers. It's a big deal to me because I only have 5 left
and don't want to fry them. I've seen a certain person in Fort Worth
go through many of them (30 over the course of two years), sometimes 2-3 at a time ;-)
I'm sure I didn't understand all the Spice simulations, but I'm
more interested in what people have actually done anyways. I'd hate to
fry a neon based on theory, I simply can't afford the loss (i.e. no
money). So heres the deal:
If you have ever run a Tesla Coil with neons then please tell me
exactly what you used to protect it, with as much detail as
possible. Saying,"two chokes and one bypass cap", doesn't help much.
Here's my setup, which got two neons fried:
I had a safety gap which fired intermitently to ground (a bolt
attached to each leg of the neon output with a center bolt to ground,
---- | ---- ). After that came a 3 inch toroid choke on each
leg with about 10 inches of 18 gauge wire on each. (not enough I'm told). For a safety cap I
had 5 small doorknob caps which screwed together and were attached across the
neon outputs (series). Each one says,"2500 MMFD - 5KVAC" (I'm really not sure what
MMFD means. I'm used to mfd and pf. Don't laugh, my major is psychology not
electronics ;-)
So there you have it. A recipe for burning up a neon! Anyone have a
better recipe?