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Re: explosive hydroforming for toroids and spheres
From: Bill Lemieux[SMTP:gomez-at-netherworld-dot-com]
Sent: Friday, December 05, 1997 4:38 PM
To: Tesla List
Subject: Re: explosive hydroforming for toroids and spheres
Tesla List wrote:
> From: Edward V. Phillips[SMTP:ed-at-alumni.caltech.edu]
> in the water to form the pressure. Never saw the inside of the
> power supply for the thing, b ut it was a cube about six feet on
> the side, so it could have held a lot of pretty big capacitors.
Depends on what you consider "a lot" and "pretty big". :-)
> The thing must have used a relay of some kind to hook the charged
> capacitors to the spark gap, as there was a big flash and loud
> sound from the inside of the PS when they fired the sparks.
I expect they were using a triggered spark gap switch, probably a
railgap switch, since this was used repetively in an industrial setting,
and you say you saw the flash. Even one of Ross Engineering's big
pulse-service relays wouldn't last a week, and Ignitrons usually have
metal cans, so you wouldn't see the flash.
If anyone can track down a copy of a very expensive book, you might
find the work "High Power Switching" by Ihor Vitkovitski amusing, if
not downright terrifying.
He defines "high power" as single pulse discharges in the 10!9 (billion)
watts or more. The applications are things like single pulse particle
beam nuke simulators, railguns, really big e-beam exciters for excimer
lasers, and the like.
Mandatory reading for anyone who is interested in doing high-power
pulse-discharge work, but expensive- expect to pay $70 for it if you
can find it, and it's not even that large a book- small print run!
--
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