Re: Tiny tesla...

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Tiny tesla...
From: NickandSim-at-aol-dot-com (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 1999 07:37:54 -0700
Approved: twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net
Delivered-To: fixup-tesla-at-pupman-dot-com-at-fixme

Hi All,

<< Hey Nick (or anybody),
 Could you please explain the stuff is said below?
Yes 
 Thanks
No problem 

 > Original Poster: NickandSim-at-aol-dot-com
 >
 > Hi Greg,
 >            tiny tesla's are great - they are genuinely safe as the 
frequency
 > is so high & and they look seriously cool.  
Small coils, because LC is so small, have a very high Fres - easily 1MHz.  At 
this frequency the skin conduction effects are very strong and the sparks 
therefore fairly safe.
Of course if you charge the tank cap to some astronomical voltage you might 
get enough power to do some damage - but I doubt you'd be able to get hold of 
any suitable caps.
 >There is nothing really special
 > about very small coils.  Just get hold of a copy of which ever tesla design
 > program suits you and punch in the numbers.  
There are many tesla coil design progarms around that do the inductance calcs 
etc and basically design you're system for you.
 >If I were you I'd use 2" PVC
 > pipe as the former and make it more like 8" high.  
Just some advice - capacitors derate with the frequency so a 3MHz coil is 
very hard on the caps. The larger sec. will also mean that a larger primary 
cap is needed to drive it allowing more power throughput.
 >This will pull the
 > resonant frequency down to a value where you don't need a totally tiny
 > primary cap and can therefore actually put some power into it.
 > A small nst - 6/60 would be more than big enough - I'd prefer a 3/60.  You
 > could also use an obit, which would make the gapping easier.
The easiest power source to get your hands on is probably a neon sign 
transformer.  
The sizes of these that you are likely to use in a small coil are 3KV or 6KV  
(KV=KiloVolt=1000volts) at 60 or 30mA (mA=milliAmp=1000th of an Amp).
There is another species of power supply the obit these are typically 10KV at 
20mA.
This makes the spark gap easier to build as it does not have to as accurately 
made
NST = Neon Sign Transformer
OBIT = Oil Burner Ignition Transformer

Its just occured to me that I've got a pair of 80KVAC 4000pF caps lying 
around - Hmmmm - 2kVA in an 8inch high secondary hahahaha.......ahem

Regards
Nick Field