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Revolution in coil design
Hi All,
sorry about the overly dramatic title but this may just justify it.
I think that it may be possible to push tesla coils up to much higher power
levels without the increase in capacitance that normally makes this such a
pain.
The actual power throuput of a tc system is determined by the break energy
(the energy stored in the capacitor when the spark gap breaks down)
multiplied by the break rate in bps.
A hypothetical small coil has a break energy of 0.25J with a 0.0141µF cap off
a 6kV neon. At 100bps (a static gap off 50Hz) that is 25W of real power into
the primary.
If we use a rotary gap an push it up to 500bps then the power is up to 125W.
There are problems with the over simplified scenario above 500bps would fry
the neon and the neon's high impeadance would prevent it from charging
properly at the higher break rate.
If we use a system fed by two MOTs rectified (6kV -at- 0.5A) then we have more
than ample power. Some of you will say 'but surely the cap will not
discharge fully' an LC osscillator is a great example of exponetial decay.
After one cycle it is down to 50% of the starting voltage then 25%, 12.5% and
so on in a lovely asymptotic curve. So by cycle 5 there is vitually no
energy being fed in anyway. Which in a medium sized system would have taken
50µs - a lot faster than even a rotary gap can quench.
Basically what I am saying is that you can simply up the power by increasing
the break rate - as long as your psu can take it.
Anything that simple has to be wrong somewhere - tell me if it is.
Nick Field
P.S. I am planning a system based around this idea which may just be running
(at 800W) for the teslthon - see you there.