Re: Electronic gap-quenching?

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

Original poster: "Black Moon by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <black_moons-at-hotmail-dot-com>

What about the other way around, quench the gap by shorting the GAP out?
(Ie, no current flow though the gap = no arc)
Seems more efficant too :P
course, we'd need some big devices, but hey, low turnon/off loss! :)


>From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
>To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
>Subject: Electronic gap-quenching?
>Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2003 19:03:30 -0600
>
>Original poster: "K. C. Herrick by way of Terry Fritz 
><teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <kchdlh-at-juno-dot-com>
>
>While noodling around with simulation, I hit on a prospective electronic
>method for quenching gaps.  The notion is to insert a damping resistance
>into the primary circuit at the appropriate time, using transistors.
>
>I simulated a 500-turn, 50 mH secondary and a 3-turn primary with
>primary:secondary coupling of 0.15.  The primary damping resistance was 1
>ohm (in a relatively low-powered circuit) and the shorting-circuit across
>the 1 ohm resistance had 20 m-ohm resistance.
>
>It happens that a long time back I'd developed (in hardware: it works!) a
>simple 1-transistor circuit for sensing when the spark commences.  It
>connects into the secondary's return circuit.  One could use that for
>sensing when to start a timing process leading up to the electronic
>quenching.
>
>I'll prevail on Terry to post http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/spk-damp1.pdf
>and http://hot-streamer-dot-com/temp/spk-damp2.pdf.  Those are
>simulation-waveforms of primary current and secondary voltage, for one
>spark-event, with and without such damping inserted.  Green curves are
>with & red are without.  The damping resistance is inserted at 38.88 ms
>and shorted out again 300 us later.
>
>Would this notion be worth pursuing, do you suppose?
>
>Ken Herrick
>