Re: 1st Tesla Coil

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

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

Chris,

Once the gap fires, it remains conducting until the energy stored in
the capacitor has transfered to the secondary, and may remain
conducting for several more transfers back and forth from pri to
secondary, until the gap quenches.  Then the capacitor can
charge up for the next gap firing.

Ideally, the gap should quench after the first complete transfer of energy
to the secondary, but usually this doesn't occur.  Therefore the
gap tends to quench too slowly.  This is the opposite of 
overquenching.  Overquenching would imply that the gap is
quenching too fast, which never occurs.  True overquenching
doesn't occur, it's a myth.

In some cases, if too much of an air blast is used for cooling/
quenching, the gap may fail to fire reliably, i.e. it may miss
some firings.  Some folks perhaps refer to this as overquenching.
If so, it seems to be a misuse of the term to me.

John


>
> It seems a decent solution. Much better than a static gap, not as nice as a
> rotary gap. The only potential problem I believe is what the experts call
> over-quenching. Ill try to explain.
> The spark gap acts as a Very fast switch... switching the currents diretion
> back and forth through the primary. That may be occuring to rapidly with my
> setup...but to rapidly is much better than not at all. The quick switching
> of current back and forth in the primary is what generates the magnetic
> field. The secondary then converts the field back to electricity and pow zot
> sparks. During operation my spark gap appears to be a constant spark similar
> to the out put of an arc welder, It is just osscilating so fast that to a
> person it appears constant..-dot-compared to a 120 bps motor that would probably
> be drastic overqueching. :)