Re: New Lab, Family Coil, 1st Light

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

Original poster: "Dr. Duncan Cadd by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <dunckx-at-freeuk-dot-com>

Hi Erik, Ed, All!

>Waaaaait a min.
>
>both caps need to only be 1/2 the req voltage, but x2 capacitance??
>
>Theoretically, you could run a 6kv 1.0 mu-f cap on each HV line and
not be
>under the req cap voltage rating with a 9kv 30ma nst??
>
>How does that work, exactly...


OK, it's simply a question of what happens when you put caps in
series.
1 / Ctotal = 1 / C1 + 1 / C2

If C1 and C2 are 6kV 0,1uF, then Ctotal = 50nF 12kV, so C1 and C2 are
half the voltage but double the capacitance of Ctotal.  But *I*
wouldn't let the individual cap voltage rating go below the total
volts of the supply, "just in case".

>Richard Quick Is the only coiler that I know of that built an
>equidrive coil system.

Aha!  Now you know another :-)  It works fine.  The main reason I did
it was to get the break rate up by reducing the capacitance.  That's
when my setup hit 6000+ bps.

I did find a 1960s vintage school physics teaching manual (I forget
the title, but there were two parts) of US origin which states, quote
' "Because neon transformers have the centertap of their secondary
grounded to the case, a symmetrical primary circuit balanced to ground
is required . . ." ' plus a whole load of other stuff we now know not
to be true, like how the secondary Q is the be-all-and-end-all of
getting large sparks.  Heads up, beware some of the older literature
if you're just starting.  Still, it was an interesting find and it did
me a few favours when I was getting started.

Dunckx
Geek#1113 (G-1)