[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Damaged / Destroyed NST?



Original poster: "Simon Yorkston by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <quantumx-at-ozemail-dot-com.au>

After sending the following message, i was wondering - could these be the
symptoms of a busted NST? Just wondering. There is no smoke / smell /
anything unusual out of the tranny when running tho..

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------

Hi all.
After extensive work, I fired up my Tesla coil. I got absolutley nothing, no
matter where I tapped it, or if I had a large or small toroid on top.

As some as you may remember, prior problems of metal-cased resistors [as per
Terry's NST protection scheme] prevented me tapping my 12 terminal SSPG
[Static Gap] past 4 or 5 terminals. I purchased, on the advice of another
coiler, a few cermaic resistors, and made a MMR. I also remade my safety
gap.

When I powered up [w/o topload or tank caps] something strange happened. On
the safety gap, there was a continuous very "smooth" arc [eg, not the loud
usual "cracks"] jumping across the LARGER safety gap. WTF? I can only assume
that the other 'side' of the protection scheme is faulty- good assumption?
[[What's strange is that the resistors on both sides were warm, so the power
was getting through]]

I retapped the Sparkgap to just 2 gaps, and powered up. This moved the
sparks into the sparkgap, with the safety arcing every 5 seconds or so.
Strangely, the SSPG would suddenly stop firing, and the spark would go the
safety. I though it might be ionised air, but I have a fan on top of the
SSPG.

Anyway, I seemed to fix it, and placed on the topload. The SSPG made those
louder 'smack' sounds that we seem to be used to, but I got NOTHING from the
topload, despite any taps on the primary. *sigh*

Notes>
> There was no unusual sparks in unexpected places [except for when the tank
arced to the ground [proves the tank was ok]]


I must say, this coil is beginning to annoy me; it's schematically and
physically [as far as i can see] and electrically correct, but I am getting
VERY poor / none at all results. It seems to be at the moment a very costly
peice of wires :)

Thanks, any ideas / support / tissues would be appriciated.
Simon Yorkston