Re: Z-Machine Sparkage - Substation Fault

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

Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>


 >
 >   The last and newer type is the ceramic type, 5-100+kv -at- 5-?? KA (ours
 > were 30kv -at- 10 KA. This one uses a square case of very hard ceramic the
 > size of a brick but hollow, the ceramic is almost .5" thick all around
 > with no sharp corners in or out. Inside there is some sort of "sand"?
 > like a white silica sand? It took me some time of dissecting to actually


It is sand (or silica particles..same thing really).. The idea is that the
arc column, because it's spread out over all that surface area, will cool,
both from just being spread out, and because of the energy consumed in
melting the sand. The idea being to cool the arc enough so that when the AC
goes through a zero crossing, it will quench.


 > see the element of the fuse, This turned out to be MANY thinner wires
 > running from the top tap to the bottom tap. When they blew the sand
 > actually melted into a geode kinda thing, melting the sand into glass
 > and contained inside the shell.


Every mfr has it's own "special secret sauce" to achieve the same general
result, and without treading on somebody else's patent, etc.