Re: Triggered Spark Gaps - Why Not?

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Triggered Spark Gaps - Why Not?
From: "R M Craven" <craven-at-globalnet.co.uk> (by way of Terry Fritz <terryf-at-verinet-dot-com>)
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 13:10:16 -0700
Approved: terryf-at-verinet-dot-com

Richard Hull replied to Gavin Hubbard:

<SNIP>

>The more elaborate the gap, the more time is spent on an area which
probalby
>won't prove all that much better than current solutions and definitely many
>times more expensive.  High power pulsed lasers are hard pressed to shoot
200+
>times per second and chopped powerful CW lasers are a horrendous expense.
>
>Richard Hull, TCBOR


Let's not forget that several tens or hundreds of  stored joules in a pulse
excited laser system is several times the stored energy in the TC primary
itself. You are using more power to trigger the spark gap than you are
switching in the gap itself!

As it has been pointed out, LTGs and similar tricky gaps are NOT what we
should be discussing. Simple rail gaps, trigatrons etc. are within our realm
to experiment with.

Reading list: Pulse Generators by Glasoe and Lebacqz; High Power Electronics
by Sargeant and Dollinger; High Speed Switching by Frungel; High Power
Switching by Vitkovitsky(sp?). These cover pretty well everything, so let's
not re-invent the wheel :)


Cheers

Richard Craven, Malvern, England