Re: 6" Coil Problems

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Esondrmn-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 9/23/02 9:33:56 PM Pacific Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
writes:

- snip -

>
> I believe the soldier shorted out one half of the MOVs, which lowered the 
> voltage at which they clamp. This level was under half of my NSTs voltage, so
>
> they were sitting there, dead short to ground. I guess the 60mA for a while 
> burned it up.  When the one failed, the same scenario occured, and the second
>
> MOV failed. Does that make sense to every one?
>
> After that I connected the NST straight to the Spark gap, with no filter, cap
>
> or anything. It let me use all 11 or 12 (I forget the total) gaps. Pleasing, 
> that my NST was still OK, I took out the actual filter, but left the power 
> resistors, and the safety gaps in circuit. That gave me max of 7 gaps, any 
> more and the safety gaps would fire. Sounds good to me.
>
> Now that makes me wonder, how long has that short been in the filter? Could 
> that have been giving me the less-than-satisfactory performance before? I 
> would like to try the coil now, but I am a bit worried about the filter not 
> being in there. I still have the safety gaps (which seem to work now) and the
>
> power resistors in place, and I know that some people use NSTs with out any 
> protection at all. But hey, I'm 14, and poor; I have built a Tesla Coil and 
> just bought an electric guitar, so I dont feel like burning up this NST. 
>
> Would it be ok to run the coil the way it is?
>
> I thank you for reading this, and hope to get this working right...
>
> ---------------------------------------
> Jonathon Reinhart
> hot-streamer-dot-com/jonathon



Johathon,

I don't think anyone can say it is ok to run the neon sign transformer without
the full protection circuit.  Stange things happen.  I do run my system with
just power resistors and safety gaps.  Using multiple static gaps, I make sure
to keep the total gap width somewhat narrow - in the range of .20" to .25".

Ed Sonderman