Re: Aluminum wire in an NST

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Justin,

They used aluminum wire since it is cheaper than copper wire.  They
probably made it a larger gage than the equivalent copper wire.  So the
losses are the same (probably does not matter much anyway).

It will have no effect on the NST at all.  The only remotely possible
problem is that aluminum is hard to make good connections to since it
oxidizes so easily.  But in this case they probably have that pretty much
figured out.

Aluminum is not generally a good conductor of RF but there are a lot of
variables in all that.  I wound avoid it for coiling unless you have a lot
already on hand.  It may noticeably affect performance if used in a Tesla
coil primary.

Cheers,

	Terry

At 11:57 AM 7/25/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>I recently dismantled a 9kV 30mA Franceformer that I got my hands on. It was 
>in pretty bad condition, so I decided to just take everything apart to just 
>see what some of the innner workings were like. I was a bit surprised to find 
>that the primary windings on the transformer were made of enameled aluminum 
>wire. Is this some sort of alternative to using magnetic laminations in a 
>transformer for current limiting? Would this aluminum wire have any practical 
>use in Tesla coiling?
>                                            Justin
>