Re: Cooking with the primary

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

Original poster: "sebastian gaeta by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <sgtporky-at-prodigy-dot-net>

Hi,

I did a bit of accidental cooking with my 304TL coil. I used too large of a 
topload, and too large of a tank cap. The large tank cap caused me to use 
too few primary turns which causes a larger RF current to flow. According 
to Bert H. too large of a toroid also caused some large circulating 
currents to flow.This all added up to trouble, and caused the bottom bolt 
on the secondary to get so hot that it melted the solder connection. My 
wooden support burned all along where the bolt, and ground strap contacted it.

Continuous wave coils are much better at cooking than spark gap systems by 
the way.

Please be careful. When there is no secondary, and sparks to dissipate the 
energy, you are going to have lots more RF floating around, which can be 
nasty if you are wearing jewlery, and harmful to other electronic devices 
nearby. You will also get an RF burn off of practically every thing 
conductive that you touch, whether it is grounded or not. If your OFF 
switch is metal like mine was, use a plasic rod or something to flip it off 
with. If you absolutely need to touch something metal while the coil is 
running you will need to equalise your RF potential by bonding to it with a 
metal object that is already in your hand like a key or something before 
you can touch it with your bare skin. When you wish to draw your hand away, 
you will have to make contact with the key first before you break 
electrical contact with your skin, otherwise you will draw an arc and get 
an RF burn. This all sounds very bizzare, but welcome to the world of high 
powered radio!

Have fun, and play safe,
Sue

Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:
Original poster: "John by way of Terry Fritz "

Hello,
I came up with an idea after looking at induction heaters on the Internet.
I was wondering if one could remove the secondary coil from the middle of
the primary and instead place something to be cooked. At high enough
frequencies this should work.

John