Re: First Light

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

Original poster: "Sean Taylor by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <taylorss-at-rose-hulman.edu>

> 1) Is there any way to get more consistent arcs instead of shorter
streamers
> flying around everywhere?
Tuning, and a bigger toroid, a large enough toroid will result in a single
long arc at a time . . .  Also, read the next few answers, they will help
also.

> 2) I figured that by grounding my secondary, I could eliminate the arcing
> problem to the primary... I still get some arcing that I'd like to fix.
Any
> ideas?
Your secondary should DEFINITELY be grounded, well grounded.  However, not
to your house's ground, but to a seperate grounding rod several feet
underground.  A strike rail is also a good idea, it will prevent damage to
your primary circuitry by letting the arcs from the secondary go to ground
rather than into the primary.

> 3) I'm getting a lot of inter-secondary arcing... how can I correct this?
Too much coupling - raise the secondary up above the primary some more, this
will also prevent primary strikes.  Your secondary is definitely big enough
to handle the power.

> .034uF capacitors (one .18, one .16, wired in parallel- mineral oil based
> rolled caps)

Are you sure you have them in parallel? Cause if they are, your capacitance
is 0.34 uF . . . maybe you just mistyped something.

> PS: We were paid a visit by campus security while firing the coil.  There
> was a complaint by a resident in the reshall next to the science building
of
> "suspicious behavior".  Campus security hadn't a clue what we were doing
> (but they came squealing in with their emergency lights on), and at one
> point during our conversation, asked, "is it allowed to build a tesla
> coil..... on campus?".  Had to take down my name and the professor's to
make
> sure the project was OK'd.  Funny, I'm on reslife staff here, and they
never
> respond so fast when we need their help. :)

He he he . . . isn't campus security great?

----------------------
Sean Taylor
The Geek Group
G-3 #1204J
Because the geek shall inherit the Earth! (c)
www.thegeekgroup-dot-org