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Re: Help PLEASE! So close.. and yet...
Yuri
Did you seal the tube before winding? That you really need to do. Also
before anyone offers any serious advice, there are a few more things
that you need to find out. Number one is the length and nuber of turns
on the secondary coil. Measure the length of the winding and divide it
by about 95% of the wire dia to find the turns. Number two is the value
of that capacitor - either (good idea) buy a cheap capacitance meter or
a cheap DMM with capacitance ranges, or, calculate the capacitance by
finding the surface area of glass between the plates, the thickness of
the glass, and use MATH.TXT (i think the formula's in there) to
calculate the capacitance. Third is the physical size and shape of the
primary coil, and its spacing from the secondary.
It seems very possible that you are way out of tune. Your cap may well
be too small to tune with the limited number of turns you have on the
primary, for a secondary of this wire guage and number of turns. You can
start initially by putting extending that primary to at least 10 turns,
myabe even 15. With more info we could find out roughly what you need to
do to get to tune. Also try one of the number of programs you can find
on the Tesla Coil Webring or (I think) on
ftp.funet.fi/pub/sci/electical/tesla to get an idea of the tuning.
Alex
Tesla List wrote:
> Original Poster: "Yuri Markov" <wmondale-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>
> Well, I fired up my "not shooting for anything glorious" coil for the
> first time. I had a problem. The transformer, capacitor, spark gap,
> and whole tank circuit work perfectly. Real nice, cool sounding
> sparks in the gap, everything perfect. Only one slight detail - the
> secondary coil and discharge terminal did nothing. Absolutely
> nothing. I tried grounding the bottom to a well, and then directly to
> the house ground, to no avail. In case it helps: The power supply is
> 7500 volts at 30 milliamps(that's 220 watts). The capacitor is a
> leydan jar of an unknown capacitance. The primary is about five turns
> of really big fat copper stuff. As I said, that all works fine. The
> secondary is 30 AWG enamled magnet wire (the really thin red stuff -
> it was all I had) wound about 3/4 the height of a thin untreated
> cardbord wrapping paper tube (2 inches diameter). A softball wrapped
> nice and smoothly in aluminum serves as the discharge terminal. What
> is wrong? Is the cardboard conducting all the RF? Is the wire fatally
> thin? Help, please!
>
> -Yuri Markov, would-be coiler
>
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