Re: TC triggered high energy discharge

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

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

Hi Jim,

It helps if the capacitor is charged to as high of voltage as possible so 
it can have a pretty good arc length initially (maybe six 
inches).   Suppose we charge our plates to +50kV and -50kV.  Probably fat 
terminals would do fine.

I think you want a inductor in the cap discharge circuit to limit the 
current to some known enormous value so the cap works more than once. ;-)

So my idea is to isolate the top terminal with say a 100pF 300kV capacitor. 
We still get nice top voltages but the top terminal will be ignored buy the 
capacitor discharge currents since the capacitor basically ground isolates 
it.  It would work much like a triggered gap.  It would arc to one plate 
first and the top cap would be charged to the first plate's voltage, then 
that streamer would die and it would look for the other plate with the top 
terminal having a 50kV offset voltage now (100kV different from the other 
plate now).  It will find the other plate pretty fast and the residual 
charge from the first plate streamer should be enough to flash the whole 
mess over. ;-))

So you just really need a good isolation capacitor in the Tesla coil's top 
terminal.  Just a block of high dielectric constant plastic with a tungsten 
plate on top would probably do it.  It would take some HV design work to 
get all the dimensions and safety factors right, but once it is going 
reliably, it should run forever without a thought.  If it had say a 60Hz 
flash rate at 50kJ per flash.  You could pump 3MW into it.  I am sure that 
would be good for something :o)))  Take a moment to imagine what a terrible 
machine it would be =:O   3MW, 60HZ, 4 foot discharge, running for a few 
hours...  I bet the neighbors would call the cops :o))  The noise the thing 
could make would probably be lethal at close range...

Cheers,

         Terry


At 06:45 PM 3/1/2003 -0800, you wrote:
>I think Bill's shot was a "non-repeatable" kind of experiment.. I'm trying
>to figure out how to get a TC streamer to carry a pile o'juice.. on a quasi
>repeatable way... and without destroying the setup... As you say, Bill had a
>few undesirable side effects from his shot.
>
>What about a HEI type TC in the middle of a big charged plane opposite
>another big charged plane..
>
>Imagine two large (1 m diameter) plates a half meter or so apart, connected
>to a big cap bank, charged to 50 kV.  Now, start a small discharge in the
>middle of one of the plates towards the other one (i.e. with GMHEITC behind
>one of the plates.  The extreme field non-uniformity should provide a path
>for the avalanche to occur.  The question is whether you could get the
>"starting end" (i.e. the TC end) of the spark to "attach" to the big plate
>as it propagates..