Re: Inexperience was RE: Mad experiment or Re: PDT

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

Original poster: "Paul Marshall by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <klugmann-at-hotmail-dot-com>

My coil runs at 18 kw and produces 10' - 12' streamers under poor 
conditions. One strike and your out. It would probably set you on fire as 
well.


>From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
>Subject: Re: Inexperience was RE: Mad experiment or Re: PDT
>Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 07:57:14 -0600
>
>Original poster: "Crow Leader by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" 
><tesla-at-lists.symmetric-dot-net>
>
>All these "horror" stories are wonderful and such, but don't actually
>educate anybody as to say prevent accidents with a tesla coil. I cannot
>imagine most tesla coils are powered off 3 phase 480 volts factory buss bar
>with nearly unlimited power levels. Your average tesla coil will not weld
>you into a breaker box, or make you fall off a utility pole while setting
>you on fire.
>
>As for Viktor's questions, keep in mind that the output of a small coil
>might not do much aside from burn you. The primary coil and caps can kill
>you easily. If you do feel the need to play with the output of the 
>secondary
>directly, you will want to avoid any means of falling into anything dealing
>with the primary. You will want to make sure that your secondary arcs are
>not picking any current from the primary as well. As you can tell from
>reading posts, people get strikes to their primary all the time. It
>inherently seems like a bad idea to intentionally play with your secondary
>arcs knowing this. Tesla coils behave in strange ways and you will probably
>want too observe the strange things that happen (as in sparks glong long
>distances and not to the nearest grounded object) before trying your
>"experiment".
>
>KEN
>
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 11:28 PM
>Subject: Re: Inexperience was RE: Mad experiment or Re: PDT
>
>
> > Original poster: "Daniel Barrett by way of Terry Fritz
><twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dbarrett1-at-austin.rr-dot-com>
> >
> > >
> > > Another example of the cavalier attitude about the danger of high
> > > potentials is prevalent is my current profession. I work in Commercial
> > > Kitchen Equip. Repair. I commonly work with voltages of 240 and 480 
>with
> > > supplies of up to 200A or greater! There isn't one time that I open a
> > > panel of 480/150A that I don't pause for the cause, but I watch techs
> > > poke and prod around live circuits like it's all made of 120/10A! I
> > > watched one trainee check a circuit with a Fluke voltage probe (the
> > > little ones that glow if voltage is present) find no indication and 
>then
> > > promptly grab the lines and shock the smile right off his face!! He 
>did
> > > not know that if you test with the Tester, putting it in certain 
>places
> > > (i.e. directly between two lines) you'll get false readings. His
> > > inexperience cost him a couple of burns and a bruised ego. He was 
>lucky!
> > >
> >
> >
> >     One this note, a story related to me by a coworker-
> > A trained/cluefull/careful technician was working on a piece of HV gear
>and
> > got zapped. That was not much of a problem in and of itself. His life 
>got
> > complicated because the jolt threw him into an open 440VAC panel, and a
> > wrench in his tool bag found two of the three legs in the panel. The
> > resulting explosion blew his left buttock OFF.
> >     The point is that the collateral damage that may occur when you get
> > zapped can be worse than the zap itself- if a little streamer hit from
>your
> > coil cause you to spaz out and dump your beer onto your primary...
> >
> > db
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >




Paul S. Marshall