Re: acmi and mandk sources anyone?

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

Original poster: "Paul Nicholson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <paul-at-abelian.demon.co.uk>

Peter Lawrence wrote:
 
> Can anyone point out where ACMI sources are now,
> 
> And if MANDK sources...

MANDK is available in
 http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Programs/MANDKV31.ZIP
with documentation in 
 http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Programs/MANDKV31.PDF 

ACMI is harder to use,
 http://www.abelian.demon.co.uk/acmi/

> I'm getting too many racing sparks with my current 3.5"x11"
> secondaries and 5.5-11.5" spiral primaries which have a
> computed K of around 1/7 (.1428) so

I'd like to do some arithmetic on this.  Can you send me more
details of your setup:

primary inner diameter: 5.5"
        outer diameter: 11.5"
   total primary turns:  ?? turns
 primary tapping point:  ?? turns
        primary height:  ??"  above/below secondary base.

secondary winding length: 11"
                diameter: 3.5"
    secondary wire gauge:  ?? awg
         secondary turns:  ??     

        primary tank cap:  ?? nF

toroid:  inner and outer diameters, and height above the
         secondary?

firing voltage at which
       racing arcs occur:  ?? kV

If you can measure any of these:  secondary inductance, Fres,
 primary inductance; it would be useful.

Oddly enough, you wrote to the list about this exactly a year
ago, to the day!  Then, you wrote:

> I seem to have had the most racing sparks in the middle of my
> secondary, not at the bottom. I had thought this was because a
> high K caused resonances at harmonics above the fundamental F of
> the secondary...
> Are harmonic resonances real, could this explain any racing
> sparks, are they really related to K?

Prescient thoughts.  Overtone resonances are real - they can be
measured easily enough.  It looks like they increase with the
coupling, but I'm not sure how they relate to K.  It may be more
to do with how evenly the coupling is distributed along the coil.
Do overtones hasten the onset of racing arcs - I'd like to find out.
If you can supply some numbers, I'll work out what your secondary is
doing with its voltage gradient.

> Peter Lawrence, Linux-vale, CA.
                  ^^^^^^^^^^
Nice address!

Cheers,
--
Paul Nicholson,
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