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Re: flashover



Hey Andrew,

    About the flashover problems that you are experiencing. I can't tell 
you how many times that I have also experienced this problem myself
in the past. It sounds like you probably don't have your secondary pro-
perly tuned to your primary tank's resonant frequency. I believe that the
Corums have explained this in their "Class Notes: Tesla Coils and the
Failure of Lumped-Element Circuit Theory". If you tune your primary cir-
cuit to too high of a freq. for your secondary's self resnt. freq, then volt-
age max. will occur somewhere in the middle of your sec. coil instead
of -at- the top toroid cap. (where you want it to occur). 

   Try lowering your primary resnt. freq. (tap at or add more primary 
windings or use a larger capacitance pri. cap.). This may help, although
it does seem like at times that a Tesla coil does this for no good reason
at all. One thing is for sure-- if your sec. coil isn't properly tuned and 
Vmax is occuring somewhere between the bottom ground and the top
sec. winding, no amount of extra insulation seems to be able to stop
these noisome flashovers.

    One other thing. Make sure your spark gap is properly quinching! Im-
proper quinching will often also lead to this problem. If you notice any
purplish-yellow plasma in your SG (power arcing) besides the normal
bright, snappy, blue-white cap discharge spark, then your SG is not pro-
perly quinching!

     I hope this may be of help to you with your Tesla project. You can 
look up the aforementioned Corum Class Notes -at- ttr-dot-com/corum/index.htm.

                                                        Keep on Sparkin'
                                                        David