Re: Ballast Puzzle

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Rscopper-at-aol-dot-com>

>sounds to me like you could use a total of four of these in series/parallel 
>for 100A. 
>Mike 
>geek # 1144  G-2 


Yes, but I would have to then build a bigger control box.  I think the 
infernal chanting of a few dozen self-proclaimed Geeks :) screaming "kill the 
computer...kill the computer" somehow convinced me to ignore my common sense 
and over-stress the system. Thank-you ma'am...may I have another.  I'll work 
on the next ballast when I get around to designing the next RSG - I've got 
plenty of watts, now I need to work on efficiency to get more sparks (20KW 
should get me more than 10-foot arcs - nice hot thick white burning plasma 
arcs such as they are). 

I'm going to spend some time instrumenting everything I can next.  I've got a 
mess of fiber optic cable, IR transmitters and receivers down in the basement 
just waiting for a project to call home.  Time to build some of Terry's 
circuits. WinTesla 4.1 is on perma-hold for now - I got some help with 
translating most of it to German for a Euro-version, and there have been 
enough discussions lately on the list to re-think some of the formulas, plus 
there are a number of you re-compiling your own code, no sense in 10 
different programmers re-inventing this wheel over and over. 

Last week I borrowed a Fluke scopemeter (to stay isolated) and measured my 
input voltage vs. current directly to see the phase difference.  Just running 
a Jacob's ladder from the pig at 100A 220V, the phase difference was approx. 
90 degrees.  My little stack of PFC caps didn't touch it (150uf).  The two 
giant PFC (100KVAR at 2400KV) I got from The Geek Group had about the same 
effect (none), so I took one apart (not easy to do) and measured the 
capacitance of one stack (there were twelve inside).  The one cap was only 
16uf, and there were bleeder resistors inside the box. 
I'll post the data as I gather it. I'm trying to borrow a spectrum analyzer 
to get a better picture of what's going on during a run (for some reason they 
don't want me to use a $50K+ instrument in the vicinity of an operating Tesla 
coil - buncha wimps - I told them I'd fix it if I broke it - they wouldn't go 
for it). 


Scott