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Re: diathermy machine
At 11:25 PM 2/4/97 -0700, you wrote:
>Subscriber: chip-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com Tue Feb 4 22:38:54 1997
>Date: Tue, 4 Feb 1997 22:02:43 -0700 (MST)
>From: Chip Atkinson <chip-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
>To: Tesla List <tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com>
>Subject: diathermy machine
>
>Greetings,
>
>In addition to Kevin Conkey's question about what a diathermy machine is,
>my question is could it be used to drive a tesla coil? I have access to
>an old one that a friend of mine bought at a garage sale.
>
>Chip
My machine was a 'dielectric heater', folks at work called it a diathermy
machine - so I'm really not sure of the differance.
The unit I have is a really a tesla coil on the inside, that's what caught
my attention when I saw the inside - it had the usual transformer and gaps
and caps with a tapped primary and a secondary that went out to two insulated
jacks in the front of the machine.
It was used to heat plastics and such to melt them together. You just put two
big flat plates on each side of what you want to heat, turn the power on low
and then adjust the primary tap until the RF power maxed out, and then applied
full power until things were hot enough.
I was told that the heat came from dielectric loss.
It likey would have made a great maggy driver in it's unmodified state...
(I just thought of this, Hmmmmm....)
The diathermy machines that I'm familar with are used in doctors offices,
usually to heat up injured muscles on folks who drag around 250 Lb.
dielectric heaters.
Both generate RF current, and I'm pretty sure you could use a diathermy machine
to drive a Tesla coil with a little playing around. Chief differance would
be power level, mine will go to almost 2 Kw, which would likely be dangerious
to a patient ;'}
I do know of industrial versions of diathermy machines also.
Any real experts out there ?
Daryl