Re: Practical limit to number of turns on primary ? ? ?

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

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz>

Hi Dan,

On 26 Jan 2003, at 19:59, Tesla list wrote:

 > Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" 
<dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com>
 >
 > Through your tesla experiences, what is the practical limit to the number of
 > turns on a primary before efficiency and performance begins to suffer?
 >
 > I personally have not built a primary with more than 16 turns, and it seems
 > most have not built tesla coils with greater than 16 turns and most of the
 > tesla cad
 > programs come up with errors when you exceed 15-16 turns (i.e. Tesla Coil
 > Cad V2.0).  Is there a reason for this?  I know it will effect coupling,
 > primary losses, etc..., but wanted
 > to hear what your experiences were with large number of turn primaries.

I'm mystified by the repeated emphasis given to the number of turns
given that most TC operations are dependent on impedances. For
example, the voltage stepup ratio in a disruptive coil is a function
of primary and secondary impedances, gap losses are a function of
primary impedance and so on....

Regards,
Malcolm

 > Just FYI, my current secondary resonant will be somewhere between 70-85 kHz
 > with toroid and 0.0275uF primary capacitor and over that frequency range, my
 > tapping range would
 > be around 14-18 turns depending on the frequency.
 >
 > Thanks
 >
 > Captain Corona
 >
 >
 >