Re: First light at 4500VA

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Rob,

"Everyone" thinks of this one ;-))  Check out:

http://www.pupman-dot-com/listarchives/2002/September/msg00074.html

Cheers,

         Terry


At 11:45 AM 11/13/2002 -0600, you wrote:
>Reading this post just gave me an idea. No doubt someone has already thought
>of this, but I've not heard of it before, so here goes.
>
>Couldn't one make an RSG without electrodes at all? Instead of placing
>steel/brass/tungsten electrodes around the periphery of the rotating disc,
>drill holes (or more likely, elongated slots) where the electrodes would
>normally be. If the disc were a good insulator (perhaps 3/8" lexan), it
>would easily quench and hold off gap conduction in between holes, and when a
>hole is presented at the stationary electrodes, the air would break down and
>conduct like in a static gap.
>
>I suspect there are at least two likely flaws, however. 1. The presentation
>time might be too short to allow thorough ionization and conduction, which
>would be dependent on the rate of spin, and might cause incomplete capacitor
>discharges. And 2. there would be more loss due to more heat/light/radiation
>generated than a regular RSG. But the benefits would be cheaper construction
>(no tungsten to buy), less maintenance, and less parts need to be precisely
>machined.
>
>None of this, of course, addresses the problem mentioned below of the
>stationary electrodes overheating. Old fashioned forced air cooling seems
>the easy solution there.
>
>Rob Judd - rob-at-a5-dot-com - canska-at-a5-dot-com
>http://homepage.a5-dot-com/~canska/tesla/