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Re: to quench or not too quench!
Tesla List wrote:
>
> Original Poster: mark <moyson-at-tig-dot-com.au>
>
> Hello again.
> I have made some big changes to my small coil now by adding more turns to
> the secondary and re tunning etc and im getting much better results from
> this small power supply! But, i was just wondering what the diffrence is
> betweeen a quenched and non-quenched spark gap. What is the advantage of a
> quenched spaek gap?
Mark,
When your main gap fires, energy in the primary LC circuit is
transferred to the secondary over a number of cycles of oscillation at
the operating frequency of you system. Ideally, once this energy
transfer has completed, and there's no more energy left to transfer,
you'd like to "quench" the gap - stop it from conducting - so that the
energy in the secondary won't transfer back into the primary circuit. If
the gap fails to quench, substantial energy will flow back from the
secondary into the primary circuit instead of going out as streamers off
the secondary, and your coil performance drops. If the gap quenches at
the first complete P-to-S transfer, this is termed "first notch
quenching". BTW, there's some debate whether first or second notch
quenching is best for longest sparks...
-- Bert --