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Re: Best Primary Coil

Subject:  Re: Best Primary Coil
  Date:   Wed, 23 Apr 1997 09:07:00 -0400
  From:   "Thomas McGahee" <tom_mcgahee-at-sigmais-dot-com>
    To:   "Tesla List" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>

> 
> 
> SEARCH FOR THE BEST PRIMARY COIL
> 
> For several months I have been building and testing primary coils. 

--BIG SNIP--
> 
> Gary Weaver

Gary,
Thank you ever so much for sharing the fruits of your research with us!
This is precisely the kind of stuff that we really need to see on this
list. I am sure that there will be others who have come to different
conclusions than you based on their own experimentation. I can only hope
that *they* will also share their findings with us.

I am sure that most of us are aware that there probably is no *one*
"BEST"
way to build a Tesla coil. When we change a single variable, it often
has
wide-ranging repurcussions and necessitates further changes to get the
optimization just right. That synergy that we all hope will be ours is
an
elusive little thing, isn't it? But well worth the effort!

Our theories, our hunches, our gut reactions must all be tempered by
experimentation. The final proof is always in the doing of it. 

Gary, it is obvious that you have been taking copious notes on what you
have done. You mentioned in your post that you wanted to keep the post
short so we would all read it. OK. After reading it and filing it away
in
several locations under various headings on my computer systems, I have
a
request to make.

Not everyone may be interested in all the nitty gritty details that you
left out in your post, but *I* sure am, and I am sure that there are
others
on this list that are also interested in getting as many of the facts as
possible. I would appreciate it if you were to post any additional facts
that you may have left out of the original post.

I also have an additional parameter that I think needs to be added to
the
set of experiments, and that has to do with the effect of the largest
diameter of the coil. For example, which is better, a primary coil that
begins 1" from the secondary and has an inductance of X, or a primary
that
begins 4" from the secondary and has the same inductance. (It will have
fewer turns to have the same inductance). You might be able to test this
without having to wind any new primaries: instead of using the inner
turn
as the beginning turn, use the outermost turn as the beginning, and tap
*in* instead of tapping *out*.

Also, for tuning, it has always seemed to me that it would make more
sense
to tap *in* instead of *out* since the inner turns have less inductance
per
turn that the outer turns, and so tapping *in* would give one greater
control over the total inductance. Actually, I guess that it would make
the
MOST sense to be able to tap BOTH in and out. One could tap outwards one
turn too many and then begin to tap outwards from the inner turn to get
the
inductance just right. 

So much experimenting still to do!

Thanks again, Gary, for sharing your experiments with us!

Fr. Tom McGahee