Re: newbie questions

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

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Lance,

At 09:26 PM 7/22/2003 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi
>
>My name is Lance Williams , I am 36 yrs. old and I live in British 
>Columbia Canada , I have a basic understanding of electricity and 
>electronics,I have been lurking on the list since Xmas, in that time i 
>have built a coil with the following specs:
>
>-3" dryer duct toroid 16" dia. oa.  a bit small but the kids prefer it 
>over the 4"(lots more sparks :)
>-14 turns 1/4" copper tube primary spaced 3/8" apart 45deg. inverted 
>conical 8" id. 19" od.
>-4.25" pvc secondary form 30" long with 25" winding of 24Ga magnet wire.
>-powered with 2  12/30 nst's (soon to be 4 :)
>-static gap 1"copper tube 6" long 11pcs. for 10 gaps at .02" each and 2 
>MOV fans for quenching.
>-2 homemade rolled poly caps .022 uf ea. in series  and an ESR of 19 and 18.
>-#4Ga welding cable for a ground wire to a 10' copper clad ground rod.
>
>With this setup i am achieving 26" continuous spark w/o breakout point and 
>32" w/ breakout points.

Excellent!!  The "theoretical" spark length for your system is 32 inches.

>
>
>Now for the questions:
>
>-Can the ESR of the caps be lowered by wrapping it tighter and 
>would  there be any improvement in performance of the coil ?

Probably no noticeable difference.  Your caps seem to be doing very well.

>
>-What does "zero crossing" mean ?

Some of us "solid state" folks like to switch "things" at a zero voltage or 
zero current "point" in the "wave".  In general, the power there is tiny 
and things don't blow up ;-))  95% of us don't care about such things...

>
>-Out of curiosity I modified a couple of old washing machine induction 
>motors (1725 rpm) to run synchronous, the second one runs a little hotter 
>but seems to be starting and locking into sync ok but the first one has 
>trouble starting and when it does it can run in either direction and gets 
>very hot .Neither motor has cap. start ,just a start winding.I removed 
>about 1" from the rotors on both motors (4 flats).Does anyone know if 
>there is a way to save this motor or is it junk ?

If you take off too much metal, the inductance of the motor goes way down 
and the current goes way up.  "1 inch" sounds pretty extreme...  You should 
see:

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/syncmot.zip

>
>- I have some 12.5" Dia. pvc sewer pipe that I could use for a secondary 
>coil could someone tell me what the minimum power requirements would have 
>to be for such a coil ?

There is no "minimum", It should do well even at 250 watts input...

>
>THANK YOU to all who contribute to this list it has been very educational 
>for me and has sparked ( pun intended) a renewed interest in electricity 
>for me .
>

Cheers,

         Terry

>Lance
>