RE: wiring the thing....

["sundog" <sundog-at-timeship-dot-net> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

Hi all!

 As luck has it, upon further cleaning of the garage, I found an old set of
jumper cables. :)  A trip to home depot for the connectors, and I'm set.
Nice thick heavy conductors with a almost-too-tough-for-a-utility-knife
insulation.  Cha-Ching!  Thanks for the info everybody!
								                 Sundog

-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla List [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
Sent: Monday, June 05, 2000 7:14 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: RE: wiring the thing....


Original Poster: "Lau, Gary" <Gary.Lau-at-compaq-dot-com>

I think for any reasonable NST-powered system, any of the things you
mentioned would be fine for the tank circuit wiring.  Even if you used SHORT
lengths of #10 AWG wire, I doubt the resistive losses in that would be
significant compared to the losses in the gap.  #0 AWG is surely overkill.

As far as reducing the wiring inductance, this is an interesting thing.
Tank circuit inductance that is not part of the primary coil is often
referred to as off-axis inductance, since it's magnetic field doesn't
contribute to the field that couples to the secondary.  It is not obvious,
but the existence of off-axis inductance does not contribute to losses.
Off-axis inductors are sometimes added in series to the primary coil as a
tuning aid to allow fine-tuning of the tank circuit's resonant frequency.

There may be other reasons to minimize wiring inductance, like minimizing
stray resonance's that contribute to EMI (and it LOOKS much nicer), but I
don't know that anyone has demonstrated that performance is affected.  If
anyone does know of any such data. I would be very interested to hear of it.

Regards, Gary Lau
Waltham, MA USA


Original Poster: "sundog" <sundog-at-timeship-dot-net>
  Okey, got some questions about wiring on the TC's.  From my neons to the
SG I have simple HV wire, because all it carries is the charging current.
The cap leads to one side of the gap (gap parallel to the NST, cap in series
to the primary), the other cap lead is used for the tap point, innermost
turn of the primary to the other side of the gap.  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!