Tabs Program

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

Original poster: "Tabraze Malik by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tab-at-malik13.freeserve.co.uk>

	The program I was telling you about is called Tesla Coil Designer. It was
written in Visual Basic 6 and has a spreadsheet style interface which uses
the component names as headings (Which can be expanded or collapsed). It has
a wizard where all the initial information is entered into the system. The
wizard keeps track of existing components and stores them in a seperate file
structure, this allows the user to reuse components that have already been
entered into the system. So to make a new coil out of spare parts from other
coils you simply specify which of the existing components to link together
to make the new coil. The program also has a database of suppliers of MMC
caps. It uses this database to build a huge array of MMC configurations then
it selects the best MMC configuration. The program basis its chioce on
factors concerned with budget, accuracy of capacitance to resonant matched
capacitanc, and size. The user can specify which factor to place more
emphasis on (Cost, Accuracy etc). So far there is only one supplier in the
database (RS Components). There are many programs that simply output the
parameters of a tesla coil based on some input values. The parameters rarely
match the real life TC, this program attempts to change its design of a TC
to try to reflect the real life TC better. There is also a database of
magnet wire for the secondary coil. The program uses your initial parameters
to select the nearest wire size then changes some parameters to account for
the difference in wire size. The user gets to specify which parameter to
change, (This is one part of the program that does not behave as expected).
The program uses information provided to it to calculate the resonant
frequency of the primary circuit. It substitutes this (together with the
secondary inductance) into the resonant formula to back calculate the
capacitance required from the secondary circuit. The CSelf of the secondary
is subtracted from this to find the capacitance needed from the topload to
bring the 2ndary circuit to the correct resonant frequency. The program then
back calculates the dimensions required from the topload to achieve this
capacitance. This is where the logic in the design process begins to wear
out. I think the formula i use to calculate CTop assumes CTop will always be
100% of its calculated value. (This way the primary tap point will be on the
lastt turn you specify).
The program generates some notets to go along with the TC which lists
miscalaneous information like winding length, wieght, supplier names,
component stock codes etc.
The program will let you import/export your TC's (from/to other people who
have this program) over the internet.
There is a backup facility which copies all the files and generates a back
up log which lists file sizes, number of records, date last modified etc.

This should be enough to interest you and i welcome any contructive
criticism/praise :)

Tabraze

PS - The TCD testers are welcome to add their pennies worth.