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19" sparks
I built a new secondary coil for my small Tesla Coil. It operates on one 12K
30 ma neon transformer. 2 air chokes 1.25" dia. 11" long 500 turns #24 wire.
Flat primary 8 turns of 1/4" copper. Richard Quick spark gap. One .008 uf
rolled capacitor. It has a 6" dia. copper sphere on top of the secondary.
The old secondary 1000 turns of #24 wire 4.25" diameter produces 14" sparks
tapped at turn 8 on the primary. The new secondary 500 turns of #24 wire
4.25" diameter produces 19" sparks tapped at turn 6 on the primary.
I am doing something right because I never expected 19" sparks from this.
But I am also doing something wrong because I fryed another transformer.
After half the transformer shorted out I decided to connect the good half of
the transformer to the TC and try again with 6K 30ma. I turned it on and got
one long spark that appeared to be about 12" to 14" for less than 1 second
and the other half of the transformer shorted out.
I fryed 4 neons on my large TC about a month ago and also shorted out all 6
choke coils. This is the 1st time I have fry a neon on the small TC. The
safety gaps fired all the time using the 1000 turn secondary but never fired
once using the 500 turn secondary. I have operated the TC with the 1000 turn
secondary for many months and have several hours of operation time on it with
no problems. The new 500 turn coil has about 10 minutes operating time.
What am I doing wrong?
Gary Weaver