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Re: Damages to Electronic Equipment

Hi,

	Very glad you computer is still around!

I have blown a telephone answering machine (AT&T) about 20 feet away.  I
can set off a CO2 detector 25 feet away.  So the EMI off a Tesla coil can
go far.  It does not matter if there are walls or floors in the way.

When I run a lot of power, I remove ALL the wires from the computer so it
is just a metal box.  Any wires leading into it are ways for nasty signals
to get conducted to it.  All those long wires between things are very
likely to pick up RF so they need to be disconnected from anything your value.

Find a very good ground for the Tesla coil.  This will insure that the RF
has a place to go.

A good line filter (I use three) and MOVs (Metal Oxide Varistors,12 of
them) to filter and clamp any AC line strikes.  I do use a scope and
sometimes a laptop near my coil.  The scope is just darn tough and I run
the laptop off batteries.  I also have a cheap printer.  I realize I am
taking a risk with these and I accept that.

I cannot explain or predict every last detail of how to protect everything
in your situation especially over E-mail.   Basically, you need to get any
wires that come within say 20 feet of the coil removed or disconnected from
the computer.  This includes AC, LAN, phone, etc.  A chicken wire cage may
go a long way here but it must not be connected to the ceiling and such.
It would almost have to be in it's own cheap wood frame.  If it were hooked
to the ceiling and grounded, it may only act like a transmitting antenna
and could make matters worse.

I would think about making the coil fairly portable and finding another
nice safe location to run it.  Tesla coils are nasty and when they do
decide to destroy electronics, the damage is "bad".

Cheers,

	Terry


At 09:40 PM 02/14/2000 -0500, you wrote:
>do i have any probs. running only a 7.5kv-at-30ma nst tesla 
>coil?interferencewise?
>