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Re: Piezoelectric Tesla coil (was Caps)
-----Original Message-----
From: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Saturday, March 25, 2000 7:08 AM
Subject: Piezoelectric Tesla coil (was Caps)
>Original Poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br>
>> Original Poster: "Scott Stephens" <Scott2-at-mediaone-dot-net>
>
>> cap can end up looking like a massive inductor at reasonance! That's
right,
>> the quartz crystal in your wristwatch has an effective inductance and
>> thousand of Henries, IIRC! Thats because energy as stress turns into
>> vibrational momentum (effective inductance). So you must design your
>> capacitor with acoustics, mechanics, in mind.
>
>This makes me think that it's probably possible to make a kind of
>Tesla coil with a big piezoelectric crystal as primary circuit.
Already has been done, the nov 99 electronic design has the article: "A
svelte beast cuts high voltage down to size" about a 1 and 10 Watt piezo
transformer for LCD display flourescent lamps that take up to 1KV. They are
much smaller than magnetic transformers. And perhaps you've seen the piezo
electric match, which has a hammer that strikes a 2mm square block of
ceramic to generate around 10KV. Some lawn-moweres have replaced the magneto
with ceramic piezo too.
>It can be excited by a capacitive discharge, much as done with a
>Tesla transformer primary, or even mechanically (!!??).
I've made my own piezo-gyro from a brass tube or iron nail stuck through a
piezo disk. Depending on where the electrodes are on the disk, more voltage
can come out than is put in, due to transformer action, but without magnetic
fields, just conservation of momentum and transformation of velocity and
displacement.
>I saw some time ago some huge crystals used in sonar systems
Yea, I need some HUGE crystals ;-)
If anyone has access to a kiln and would like to fire up some affordable
hocky-puck size piezo disks for us to experiment with that would be real
nice. But I can't see caughing up $100 for a part I know I will destroy 10
of while I test and perfect.
Scott