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Re: New Coil/First Run (15 1/4" dia)

Subject:     Re: New Coil/First Run (15 1/4" dia)
      Date:  Sat, 03 May 1997 20:06:33 -0500
      From:  Chuck Curran <ccurran-at-execpc-dot-com>
        To:  Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
        
>        From:   Jeremy Bair <pwac-at-flinet-dot-com>
> Organization:  PWAC
>          To:   Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>  References:
>             1
> 

> >
> > Hello All:
> >         Last night I was finally able to set up and put power to my
> > newest
> > coil.  This is the one with the 15 1/4" dia. secondary with a 56" long
> > winding of #15 wire (motor magnet wire comes in 1/2 size steps and odd
> > numbers too).  The toroid is 10 1/2" x 56" and I attached a breakout
> > bump during assembly.  Well, things went O.K. at first.  I did video
> > tape it in order to slowly examine things later and that will help.  As
> > I ran up the autotransformer I was expecting to hear the spark gap and
> > then with a bit more input voltage achieve breakout on the toroid.  As
> > soon as I heard the gap fire within a split second 6-8 foot sparks shot
> > out of the breakout bump on the toroid.  There was also quite a bit of
> > light coming up from beneath the primary where I house the spark gap,
> > more than I recall from when I ran just the one .025 CP cap.  Oh, I
> > better mention I had my new Plastic Capacitiors .05 and the older .025
> > CP cap in parallel.  The light had me watching since it really reflected
> > off the bottom of the aluminum foil covered toroid.  Well, within about
> > 20 seconds I apparently popped the fuse on the circuit for the rotary
> > motor and it started to wind down with an interesting display of how
> > higher break rates promote better spark! I did use a tach to set the
> > rotary at a break rate of 360 bps for this first run. Today I'll be
> > checking out the details of the short run and then try again.  I watched
> > the video, in some sections frame by frame and I didn't see any clear
> > evidence of any "unplanned" arcing.  The light coming up from the vacuum
> > and rotary gaps did however sort of mask things abit so it's really way
> > too soon to know if the coupling and other items are O.K. or not.  The
> > few sparks that did occur were dramatically more intense with this
> > bigger coil when compared to my 8" dia secondary coil from last year.
> > The final resonant frequency turned out ot be 65 Khz on this new coil,
> > just for information.  I hope that within about one hour today I'll have
> > things ready for another test run, even though rain is predicted, I'll
> > at least get it ready for today or tomorrow!
> >
> > Chuck Curran
> > Cedarburg, WI
> 
> Wow, sounds great! I'm wondering one thing, I hope you weren't looking
> too deap into the bright spark light. Even with a small cap, this
> brightness can be enough to blind! (Or at least make black spots that
> stick for a few minutes).
> 
> You know anyone with a video importer that could grab the video and post
> it somewhere in a format we can all enjoy? 6-8' sparks. Awsome to say
> the least.
> 
> --
> _________________________________________________________________________
> |Jeremy Bair IRC:DeadBatry
> |Email: mailto:pwac-at-flinet-dot-com mailto:deadbatry-at-cycat-dot-com or hotmail-dot-com
> |Web page: http://www.flinet-dot-com/~pwac
> |Phone: 561-585-4165
> |
> |

Jeremy:
        No, I don't spend too much time looking at the spark gap.  You
are 100%
correct, it can be identical to looking at a welder with damage
resulting.  Since I have neighbors that sort of stroll over when the
sparks start, I built my system with that in mind.  The entire primary
and secondary sit on an enclosure that hold the caps, stationary vacuum
gap and rotary directly under the primary.  This square (top view) area
is then enclosed with 1/4" masonite side panels that prevents any direct
view of the gaps, plus it ought to slow down any exploding cap!  The
spark gap light really reflected off the foil covered toroid bottom and
I thought at first things were arcing all over the place--they weren't.
        No, I don't right now have a means of posting video clips.  I'll
check
around and see if I can get something going, but nothing at this
moment.  Thanks for your interest.

Chuck Curran