Re: hand crank coil for demos

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

Original poster: "Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <acmq-at-compuland-dot-com.br>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Matthew Smith by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <matt-at-kbc-dot-net.au>

> Er, perhaps I should whisper this, what with this being a TC list, but
> you can get some very impressive results with hand-cranked electrostatic
> machines as our friend Dr de Queiroz could doubtless tell us ;-)

12 cm sparks are easy to generate, up to several per second with a 30 cm
disk machine of almost any kind. A few Watts of output at most for about
4 times greater mechanical power. At the reasonable limit for hand-
cranking and a large machine, sparks of maybe 30 cm (12") can be
produced.

I have an old telephone crank generator, that produces up to 100 V. I
can
make it power an ignition coil, by rectifying its output to charge a
capacitor of a few uF, and use an SCR with a neon lamp or two, in series
with a resistor from cathode to gate, to discharge the capacitor over
the primary of the coil. Works, but a static generator produces much 
better output...

Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz