Re: New Lab, Family Coil, 1st Light

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 5/14/01 10:45:23 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:

<< 
 I've heard strong disagreement to this in the past but I must say what I
 believe.  You are referring to the so-called equidrive configuration
 where the two caps are each tied to opposite ends of the primary coil.
 In both the 60Hz charging phase and the post-bang RF ringdown phase, the
 primary circuit is a series configuration.  Electrically, a series
 circuit will behave the same regardless of what order the series
 elements occur in.  Like a flashlight with two D-cells, a switch, and a
 bulb, it would work the same if the bulb were between the two D-cells.
 This is Circuit Analysis 101, and these rules are inviolate and apply
 equally to AC and DC circuits.  Tesla coils are no exception.
 
 There is nothing wrong with this configuration, it does appeal to one's
 sense of symmetry, and it may or may not physically work out better
 wire-routing-wise.  But the components and electrons don't care either
 way.
 
 Gary Lau
 MA, USA
 
 
  >>
Gary,

I agree.  Richard Quick Is the only coiler that I know of that built an 
equidrive coil system.  I believe he used two .10 ufd caps.  His system 
worked very well, I have video of it running.  Twelve to fourteen foot arcs 
if I remember correctly.  He liked the set up.  I have not seen evidence of 
increased performance with this system over the single cap design.  The 
equidrive caps only need half the voltage rating but need to be twice the 
capacitance.  You also must remember to discharge the caps after every run as 
the transformer secondary windings will not provide that function as it does 
with a single cap.

Ed Sonderman