Re: Over-coupled or under-insulated?

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

Original poster: "boris petkovic by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <petkovic7-at-yahoo-dot-com>


Hi Chris,
 >
 > I finally got around to testing the coil today. At
 > the extreme raised
 > height, nothing went wrong. I lowered it back down
 > to 2 inches above the
 > primary and it immediately sparked to itself. So as
 > long as I keep it very
 > high above the primary, nothing goes wrong. (at
 > least it didn't just burst
 > into flames)  Does keeping the secondary that far
 > above the primary reduce
 > the performance?
---
Yes.Lower coupling=more cycles in a beat envelope =
more energy dissipated in gap and less energy avilable
for secondary=shorter sparks.
---

  Would I be better off to wind a new
 > secondary? I actually
 > have enough leftover pipe and wire left to redo it
 > if I have to, but would
 > rather fix it instead of winding all of that wire
 > again...
---
Winding a new secondary is overkill if you can save
problem by careful inspection and fixing insulation
issues.Is your coil space or close wound?
Revarnishing sometimes may be of help.
As concerns racing sparks troubles (on secondary with
fixed insulation!) ,you may want to experiment with
putting layers of various insulating materials wraping

thicker your secondary this way.
You may also form few thicker "rings" of insolation
around secondary and separate them by  several inches

of distance and observe how coil copes with higher
couplings and racing sparks.
Good Luck.

cheers,
Boris




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