Re: wiring the thing....

[FutureT-at-aol-dot-com (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

In a message dated 6/5/00 11:56:30 AM Pacific Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes:

> My question... should I
>  use a copper or aluminum strap from the cap/gap to the primary, or just 
good
>  0 gauge wire? welding leads? stranded? solid? copper tubing?  I know to 
keep
>  the leads as short as possible also. to keep inductance down, because the
>  wire itself adds inductance to the primary circuit, and we want as much of
>  the EM field in the primary as possible...not in the leads going to it.
>  
>  Thanks for the time & help!

It depends a lot on how many turns you're using in the primary, and
how much power is involved, etc.  If you're just using a typical small
NST set-up, it won't make much difference how long the wires are,
how thick they are, etc, as long as they're reasonably thick.

On my coil I replaced the # 12 tank wiring with # 6 wiring, but it
made no difference, the sparks remained at 38" with a 10 turn
primary.  Much more was gained by using thinner wire (more
turns) on both the primary and secondary so that the gap losses 
were reduced, etc.  This caused the sparks to increase to 42".

Since most of the losses are in the gap, it stands to reason that
more can be gained by reducing the gap losses than by reducing
the wiring losses.

cheers,
John Freau.