Wire Guage and Q?

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Wire Guage and Q?
From: "Nathan Ball" <nateburg-at-hotmail-dot-com> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)
Date: Sat, 01 Jan 2000 11:20:00 -0700
Approved: twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net
Delivered-To: fixup-tesla-at-pupman-dot-com-at-fixme

Greetings, All!

     I am wondering about Q and how it relates to wire guage.  My present 
coil seems to be getting rather poor output.  I have a 15/30 NST power 
supply (I kicked it up to 60 mA a couple times because I do have a bunch of 
other trannies) but my dad won't let me pump more raw wattage in until I max 
out the coil at its present spec.

I have a 0.005 uF cap that's polyethylene sheeting, and I just moved to a 
rotary gap that is now synchronous at 120 BPS.  I am pretty sure it's sync 
now that I modified it because the lights turn off when I run it until the 
demand controller catches up.

Anyway, straight to the point.  My secondary is on 7" dia T-600 PVC pipe and 
24.5 inches of it are wrapped with 20 AWG wire.  Most of the coils I have 
seen comparable to my size are wound with at least 22 guage, some even up to 
25.  How exactly does Q come into play? I originally wrapped the secondary 
with 20 guage because I read bigger guages get higher Q but also higher 
isotropic capacitance.

My primary is 15 turns of 1/4" refrigeration tubing at a 35.5 degree angle 
spaced 1/2".  I think my secondary operates at about 300 kHz and I thought 
with higher Q, precise tuning is required, but I can't see much difference 
in output between the 13th and 15th turns on the primary.

If I made a new secondary with finer wire (23-25AWG) would my coil run 
better?  I tried to run my specs through WinTesla as best I could, but you 
have to put in your desired output voltage first in the coil designer 
instead of putting in your own specs and the program tells you what your 
output should be.

It told me for 200,000 V output voltage (which I think represents a foot of 
output) with my present power supply and 15 primary turns that I needed 25 
guage wire on the secondary.  Shoot! especially after all that work, AND 
blowing $40 on a full 10 lb roll of 20 guage.  I may be able to trade that 
roll and some money for a roll of 24 guage or so, but need I do this? have I 
really maxed out my specs?

Thanks, and Happy New Year!
Thank goodness Y2K didn't take down our beloved discussion list!

Nathan Ball
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