Re: Tuning a safety gap . . .

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

Original poster: "cd by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <vbprg1-at-hotmail-dot-com>

I had orriginally tuned my safety gap this way ( to fire at 100% variac)
and while it initially seemed to work well.
I decided to widen it just a hair so it didnt fire on the NST's.
I opened it up so that it just did not fire at 100 percent on the variac.
During the next operation of the coil. I got much better performance.
The safety gap still fired but instead of a quick spark over and total shut
down of
current. It appears now to occasionally jump very small sparks across the
gap
during minor "bad occurances" surges and such, but all major "bad occurance"
oversparking in prmary and secondary strikes to primary were met with a
thick full spark
across the safety gap.
It seems to me that this is the ideal setup considering when the safety gap
was tuned to fire at 100 percent variac even a small surge would stop the
coil from operating untill I dropped the power level on  the variac.
Surges/spikes still  drop into the safety but after they have passed the
coil will still continue to operate with out a quick power down.

Chris Dowdy
"hoping to help someone half as much as this list has helped me"


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 9:09 AM
Subject: Re: Tuning a safety gap . . .


> Original poster: "Jonathan Peakall by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jpeakall-at-madlabs.info>
>
> Dan,
>
> A third way, just to keep it interesting...
>
> I adjust mine until they just *barely* fire with only the NST. I find that
> with my coil tuned properly they don't fire at all, or rarely. I like this
> method because I know for sure that the safety gap is protecting my NST. I
> don't find it to affect performance at all.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonathan Peakall
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 10:00 PM
> Subject: Tuning a safety gap . . .
>
>
> > Original poster: "Daniel McCauley by way of Terry Fritz
> <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com>
> >
> > I've just got my NST and finished building my NST "ala Terry Fritz"
> filter.
> > I in the process of tuning my safety gaps, but so far i am hearing two
> > different stories on this newsgroup:
> >
> > 1.  Adjust safety gap just until it doesn't fire.
> >
> > 2.  Adjust safety gap just until it doesn't fire and then move it an
> > additional "x" fraction of an inch.
> >
> > So which is it???
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Dan
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>