Slinky Toroids!

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

Original poster: "Dave Hartwick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ddhartwick-at-earthlink-dot-net>

I make small toroids out of slinky toys. It is incredibly easy, and they
perform very well. Though the surface is not smooth per se, it does have an
element of smoothness with respect to the vertical plane--the uniformly
smooth turns of the helix.

To make a 12" toroid, for example, I simply brought the ends of the slinky
around to form the donut shape and solder them together. I them pushed the
bottom of a large coffee can through the center which expands the donut to
final size and shape and hot glued the slinky to the coffee can bottom.

I just bought a bunch of cheapo aluminum party trays of varying size that
I'm going to use with multiple slinkys for larger units.

The turns of the slinky are naturally shorted so there is no fear any
undesirable effect from its potential inductance.

I also have an 8" toroid made with a small cat food can. This serves well
for corona suppression immediately at the secondary top.  I think there may
be a small and standard size slinky (Walmart). I used the standard
size--2.75" dia windings.

John F and others saw these toroids at Ed Wingate's 99 Teslathon, but I
thought I would discuss the idea again.
Dave H