Re: General Questions VIII

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

Original poster: "Gregory Hunter by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ghunter31014-at-yahoo-dot-com>

I think the primary limiting factor is spark gap
heating and the secondary limiting factor is tank
capacitor heating.

If your goal is long run times, then I suggest you
over build your gap and cap.  My 1" copper pipe sucker
gap can run for a few minutes at 4KVA, or it can run
forever at 1KVA from a pair of NSTs.  In the former
case, the electrode heat builds up faster than the
copper mass and the moving air can remove it. 
Eventually the thing power arcs, and I have to shut
off the high voltage and let the air flow cool it
awhile.  In the latter case, the gap removes heat
faster than the NSTs can add it, so it can run
indefinitely. My gap always has a thin film of soot on
the electrode faces. It never builds up, so I don't
clean it anymore. I'm confident it could run for hours
at 1 kilowatt.

As for the cap, I use a huge raft of beer bottle caps.
 The thermal mass of these is so huge that I've never
been able to detect any warming at any power level or
any length of run. A better approach would be to build
an over-engineered MMC using only polypropylene pulse
caps with extended foil construction. In my own
limited experience, I've found that a physically
small, lightweight MMC can process an amazing amount
of power without warming up. I'm speculating that a
bigger, heavier MMC could handle a ludicrous amount of
power on short runs or moderate amount of power
indefinitely.

Greg
http://hot-streamer-dot-com/greg

--- Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:
> Original poster: "Wade B AndB Anderson by way of
> Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <nabedaw-at-juno-dot-com>
> 
> Hi Guys,
> 
> I'm a little disappointed in the response that I
> received about how long
> will the TC operate???
> 
> I've spoke with a couple of different people here in
> Omaha, and they seem
> very confident that TC's operating with static or
> rotary gaps can run for
> very short periods of time. Where a solid state
> driver is more reliable.
> I'm hoping that you folks will clear this up for
> me???? Please.
> 
> Onto a good question.....Will matching the
> impedance's of the primary and
> secondary coils increase effeciency and performance
> of a TC??? Or is it
> even necassary.
> 
> Anyway, Thanks
> 
> Wade
> 
> 
> 


__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 
a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo-dot-com/