Re: newbie questions

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

Original poster: "Chris Roberts by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <quezacotl_14000000000000-at-yahoo-dot-com>

Hi Lance,
Well, in response to the large secondary question, there is no limit to how 
little power you need to put through a certain size of coil. The main 
reason that you don't see little NSTs  powering a gargantuan coil is the 
fact that the sparks would be proportionally tiny
and nobody wants little 2 foot sparks coming off of their 15 foot tall 
coil. =D That and the fact that such a large coil is much more cumbersome 
than a smaller one. Unfortunately, it dosen't work the other way around, so 
no hooking your pole transformers up to those little 1 inch secondarys. =D


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

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.
-#4G! a 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.


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 ?

-What does "zero crossing" mean ?

-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 ?

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

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 .

Lance




-Chris