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Re: Partial Discharges.....A good reason for cap failure?
Tom,
We must be virtually the same age! I too built my first coil at twelve
at virtually the same time. I remember it well. They were the best of
time and the worst of times. Elvis was not quiet king, The hula hoop
was the rage, Edsels were starting to flop, Fins on cars were at a
peak, the IGY was in full swing, the U.S. "Atoms for Peace" program
was sending fresh nuclear isotopes to amateur experimenters directly
from Oak Ridge at no charge and our Navy was killing hundreds of snakes
with exploded Vangard missiles demonstrating that we were most capable
of losing the space race while Russia's little non-data grabbin'
sputniks beeped out their success on the normal shortwave frequencies.
My coil was a ford spark coil based system and used the classic two nail
gap. I used some old window glass my grandfather had laying around
with tin foil plates for my capacitor. I used a motor oil/parafin
based compund to seal the foil/plate capacitor from air. The whole
thing ws wraped up with wax impregnated twine. I got about 0.5" more
spark off of the coil than I could get off of the Ford coil. The neat
thing was that I could touch the spark off of the Tesla coil, while the
Ford spark coil would rattle your teeth and lock you up in a manner that
you would never forget if you came into contact with it. This amazed me
as I had never worked with high voltages at RF frequencies. While I was
at that time a true nerd with active participation in amateru rocketry
(steel 40 pound jobs), Chemistry, and some electronics, The Tesla coil
pushed me over the edge and decided my future course would be
electronics.
Amazing, the trigger moments that change a life.
Richard Hull, TCBOR
Tesla List wrote:
> Original Poster: "Thomas McGahee" <tom_mcgahee-at-sigmais-dot-com>
>
>
> I built my first Tesla coil in 1958 when I was 12 years old.
> I got interested in Tesla coils after seeing one demonstrated
> in a physics lab. My first unit was quite pathetic, being
> powered by a modified Model T spark coil. It was under-powered,
> out of tune, and slapped together from a hodge podge of
> homemade parts. It is amazing that it worked at all. But
> that early taste for arcs and sparks has been with me ever
> since.
>
> Fr. Tom McGahee
> Amateur Scientist
> Tesla coil builder
> Electronics Teacher
> Science Enthusiast
> Priest
>
> ----------
> From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
> Subject: Re: Partial Discharges.....A good reason for cap failure?
> Date: Sunday, March 07, 1999 4:09 AM
>
> Original Poster: "Reinhard Walter Buchner" <rw.buchner-at-verbund-dot-net>
>
> SNIP!
>
> Fr. Tom,
> Thank you.
> Yes, your point of a new coiler maybe believing oil
> isnīt necessary, IS a good point. I didnīt mean to
> say this, of course. I just wanted to make sure that
> coilers should realize, that even though they are
> pouring "gallons" of oil into their caps, this will not
> totally eliminate the corona production (this is a
> hard to believe fact, but after seeing this effect a
> few times I DO believe it). Your last comment is an
> important consideration to take, when building your
> own pulse caps. It might be worthwhile to wrap the
> connection tab with a few sheets of interleaved poly
> and paper, all the way from the bolt hole to the point
> where the connection strap turns into the actual
> capacitor plate. Slightly off-topic:
> But how did you get interested in Tesla coils? Thanks!
>
> SNIP!