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First light, and a poor performance
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From: Steve Rodway [SMTP:Legion-at-legion-elec.demon.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, August 23, 1998 5:44 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: First light, and a poor performance
Hi all,
Just fired up my new TC for the first time tonight, and
unfortunately the output fell somewhat short of what I was expecting,
I'd be very grateful if anyone could make a few suggestions about how to
improve it.
The system specs are as follows.
Power supply, 11 kV (rms) polepig with resistive ballast made of 4Kw
of heating elements filter consists of 2x20mH inductors and a 1.7nF
bypass cap. Main tank capacitor is 7.42nF and the primary coil is a 30
degree inverse conical with 12 turns of 1 mm wire 7 mm apart. The
primary is spaced 20 mm from the secondary and the bottom turn of each
coil line up. The gap is 6x0.5mm tungsten carbide static gaps.
The secondary is 4" dia and wound to 16.5" with 0.56mm enameled
wire, there are around 660 turns giving an inductance of 11.4mH and a
capacitance of around 8pF.
The system was run at first with no top load, tuning was around turn
6 and the maximum arc length to a grounded rod was 8", with a 4"
spherical top load then the arcs reached 11". When the system was run
for any length of time, the nickel coating on the top load was etched
through, and when the plastic underneath was burnt then the arc length
decreased dramatically. Also it was found after a short while that the
acrylic support structure of the gap had melted.
I am planning tomorrow to build a much better gap that can take the
heat for longer and a finite element array toroid 14"x3". that should
bring the system to 1/4 wave operation, and, I hope increase the output
because from looking at other's coils, 11" from 4Kw seems very poor.
If anyone else has any other suggestions for improving the system, I'd
really like to hear them.
Steve
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