Beginner's coil

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: Beginner's coil
• From: Terry Fritz <terryf-at-verinet-dot-com>
• Date: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 16:32:14 -0700
• Approved: terryf-at-verinet-dot-com

Hi All,
	
	I have been playing with my super simple Tesla coil project.  I got a
spark out of it today (about 3 inches!).  I zipped up a bunch of pictures
that are at:

www.peakpeak-dot-com/~terryf/tesla/misc/gm1.zip

No spark pics because the digital camera is not good at catching stuff like
that.

The coil is a GM HEI coil with the core cut off with a hacksaw.

The primary cap is an array of 17, 0.01uF 630V poly caps in parallel.  Fo
is around 10kHz.  All my measurement stuff is out until the carpet dries,
then I will know more.

The spark gap is 3 mil wide or the thickness of a sheet of normal Xerox
type paper.  Arcs at around 700 volts.

I used a HV supply for testing today to get the gap width and such correct.
 I haven't hooked it to a MOT yet :-)).

The GM coil needs to be immersed in oil.  The one I have has "been around
the block :-))" a few times and arcs along the outside to some cracks in
the case.  Oil should keep the arcs were they should be.  

Still much testing to do before it is perfected but today's results are
very good.  I don't recommend trying this yet because there still much
testing to be done.  I don't know if It will die under real break rates or
not.  I was only firing it a few times / second today.  

A broken hot water heater flooded my TC lab carpet so this was a natural
kitchen floor project.  Much fun was had :-))

My 10nF 25kV cap built from many smaller caps is done too but the small
flood has interrupted this project for a few days.  

	Terry

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