Re: Faraday Cage

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

Original poster: "Harold Weiss by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <hweiss-at-new.rr-dot-com>

Thanks Jim,

I forgot about the floor, but I have enough chicken wire/ T/G 3/4" plywood
to put a floor in. The concrete floor does have reinforcing mesh in it
though.  I chose to use a separate ground rod for the cage,( too many weird
things happen on power ground)  power ground will only run up to the variac
in my controller and from that point everything else is on RF ground.  I
don't think the cable passthru will be much of a problem as the controller
will be sitting only 1" away from the cage with the connectors protruding
into the hole.  The variac output and SRSG outputs will both be filtered.  I
will be putting in another RF ground next to the driveway this spring to
handle my new 10 KVA pig and my old 15" coil, so I can watch it zap
lakeflies by the millions.

David E Weiss

 >
 > The cage IS the RF ground for the coils, if the coil is running inside the
 > cage.  In theory(!) the RF will stay inside.
 >
 > What's the floor of the cage?
 >
 > I'd just ground the cage to safety ground.
 >
 > Think carefully about how you're running wires through the cage
 > wall.  Holes won't make much difference (camera port), as long as no wire
 > goes through it.  However, the AC power wires can serve as a means for RF
 > to get out of the cage.  Think about getting/building a good line filter
 > and installing it in the wall of the cage, with the cage bonded all the
way
 > around the filter.
 >
 > The ground rods probably aren't really necessary (for the cage), because
 > the RF current will never get to them (since you aren't going to run a
 > ground wire out through a hole in the cage), and presumably, your house
 > wiring will have safety grounding.
 >
 > On the other hand, the oudoor ground rod will be handy when you want to
run
 > the coil outdoors in the summer.
 >