Re: 30 9 mil gaps, great quenching (fwd)

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: 30 9 mil gaps, great quenching (fwd)
From: Tesla List <mod1-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Fri, 17 Jul 1998 22:04:09 -0600 (MDT)
Approved: mod1-at-pupman-dot-com


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 18 Jul 1998 06:40:33 +0930
From: Mark Finnis <mefinnis-at-medicine.adelaide.edu.au>
To: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Subject: Re: 30 9 mil gaps, great quenching (fwd)

At 10:11 17/07/98 -0600, you wrote:

>> Hello,
>> 	I have bin using a RQG with forced air and have bin getting 3rd notch 
>> quenches, Then I switched to a RQG with a vacuum cleaner pulling air
through 
>> it.  This gave me 2nd notch quenching.  At this point I was getting 33" 
>> streamers.  I read some of Terry's writing and decided to build a static
gap 
>> that would have 30 gaps that were 9 mils each.  So I built it and
connected it
>> into my primary circuit.  Then I stepped back 4 feet and flipped the
switch.
>> 
>> 	A huge explosion of sparks came off of the secondary nearly hitting me 
>> in the arm.  After I moved away another 4 feet and checked my pulse I 
>> turned it back on.  It was putting out nice 39" streamers on 15KV/60ma
NST.  
>> I checked my scope and noted that it quenched on the first notch every
time.  
>> I was also getting some corona from my strike rails so I replaced the wire 
>> with copper tubing and it went away.  At this point I was low on time so I 
>> didn't have a chance to change the coupling.  Ow well, that will be
tomorrow's
>> adventure.

I am not EE based & don't have the equipment to measure notch-quenching.
However I suspect that much of the benefit from the multi-gap is simply
mass of copper.

I build my second static gap with 4 copper couplings (35 mm length by 25 mm
/ 1") and five gaps.  Used blower fan.  Worked quite well, better than
previous gap, but did get hot after long runs.

Found some heavy copper pipe at work.  4" / 100 mm and thick-walled.  Built
new SG with 3 pieces of pipe / 4 gaps (I use electrodes at each end) each
100mm length.  Also using fan

This is a lot of copper !!  And its heavy too ;-)

Did some runs of 3-5 minutes continuous duration .......... copper just
perceptibly warm.

Now as I say, I can't measure it, but a gap thats cold is a good gap (I
think).

Interested to know what the guru's think ?

Cheers,
Mark


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Mark Finnis			Hm:  61 8 82895205
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