Re: insulaters

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Lau, Gary by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>"
<Gary.Lau-at-compaq-dot-com>
> 
> While the various beehive-shaped ceramic insulators that are often used on
> top of secondary coils do look very nice, I'm not sure they actually serve
> any real purpose.  The top of the coil is at WHV (Wicked High Voltage), and
> so is the toroid.  The two need to be connected, nothing is being insulated
> from anything else.  If your telephone insulators don't have a bolt that
> goes completely through to connect the secondary to the toroid, then you'll
> have a problem.  All you really need is the bolt - the porcelain serves no
> purpose in this application.
> 
> Gary Lau
> Waltham, MA USA

	The porcelain "looks purdy" and you see such things in some of the old
pictures of coils dating back to pre-WW1 days.  The thought occurs to me
that a simple and neat method of mounting might be to use screw small
pipe flanges to the top of the coil and bottom of the plate to which the
toroid is mounted, and the connect them with an ordinary nipple.  That
way the toroid could be removed easily, and height adjusted by using
nipples of different sizes.  Despite the fact that the nipple on the
coil would form a "shorted Turn" I think it would have no measurable
affect on performance.

Ed