Re: spark gap question...

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Original poster: "Jason Petrou by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jasonp-at-btinternet-dot-com>

Hi there

Sounds icky.. obviously there is current flowing, because you can
successfully fry resistors.. lessee... 4000/33 100A, i.e. 330KW - yes that
would fry a resistor. The problem is in the primary circuit - sounds lie you
are either using a dead cap bank, or a vary high resistance circuit, which
a TC circuit is definitely not. I would replace your caps - that is proably
the main problem!!

Good luck
Jason
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 2:33 PM
Subject: spark gap question...


> Original poster: "brentonps by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<brentonps-at-optuset-dot-com.au.pupman-dot-com>
>
>     The other night i finally got round to putting together some pieces
for a
> relatively small TC however, i was unable to get the electricity to bridge
the
> spark gap no matter how close the wires where (well, within a couple of mm
at
> least). At first i thought that my transformer was shot or something had
> shorted so
> i placed a 33ohm resistor across the spark gap and turned it on. The
> resistor ended
> it's life in a blaze of glory and i saw a bright flash. So, i had
considerable
> power but the initial spark wasen't happening. I know that my line
transformer
> (MOT) is giving out more than 3kv as my 3kv capacitors sorta..um...blew up
> (now i
> have a large black mark on the side of my casing).
>     Does anyone have any ideas as to why the gap wasn't being briged? It
> was a very
> dry night so i don't know if that would affect it at all.
>     After a while i did another resistor but left the power on for
> 20-30secs or so
> and a very large blue arc formed across my 2cm gap. I estimate my power
> output to
> be 4kv at about 500ma. My input to the MOT is 240v at about 11A. I have a
> overload
> protector that trips after about 10-20secs of usage.
>
>
>