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Re: Beginner's Tesla coil -First Light!
On Sun, 15 Nov 1998 19:51:17 -0700, you wrote:
>Original Poster: Terry Fritz <terryf-at-verinet-dot-com>
>
>Hi All,
>
> 10 inch arcs out of a GM HEI ignition coil!!
>
> I finally submerged the GM HEI coil in oil and let her go. It easily
>arced the 10" to a grounded salad bowl I was using to contain the mineral
>oil incase something leaked. It probably could have gone further. This
>was in single shot mode and the voltage should have been around 120kV. The
>arcs were strong and blew a hole through a bit of PVC. I added more oil to
>stop the "leak".
>
> The high voltage supply was loosing it's mind when the coil fired, so I
>used a bridge rectifier and hooked it to my variac-neon charging circuit
>for my regular coil. Thus I could fire it at a much higher rate than 1 BPS
>(I was getting carried away at this point). I knew much more power was
>needed :-)). The neon ran it right up there to ~10BPS. Then the coil
>blew! :-( The primary looks like a short now. I'll clean it in detergent
>and do an autopsy tomorrow.
Did you de-can the coil before oiling? If not, it could be that the
plastic parts have broken down - I managed to get a pinhole puncture
through the top plastic cover of a non-immersed coil, but then I was
firing about 2KV from a 120uf cap into the primary......!