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Re: arcing on secondary
From: Julian Green[SMTP:julian-at-kbss.bt.co.uk]
Sent: Friday, November 21, 1997 5:56 AM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: arcing on secondary
> could someone explain to me waht is happening when a sparks jump across
> the windings of the secondary? it happened to me the other day with my
> 6" coil near the bottome of it. i saw it do it twice then i shut it
> off.
>
> thanks
> Kevin Wahila
>
Two things could be happening.
1) Your coil is overcoupled - bad news as the arcing would have burnt the
insulation on your coil.
2) You are getting corona from a nearby conductor and charging up the
insulation on the coil. These sparks are low power and cause no damage.
Both are easy to fix. If #1 then reduce the coupling by proping the secondary
up on some blocks of wood. If #2 then re-wire the primary so nothing gets even
close to the secondary.
On my coil I had #2 which alarmed me at first, but noticed that it always
occured where the primary tap was made. It was the wire to the primary tap
that was causing corona to the secondary. Try running the coil in the dark
I could see the corona. Repositioning the wire cured my arcing problem.
Julian Green