RE: MOT-powered coil questions

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

Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com>



These are low power coils.  I'm not debating the fact that low voltage, high
current designs would be difficult
indeed to design and build a suitable spark gap.  The original poster stated
that 4kV was too low of a voltage period to
get reliable operation in a tesla coil and that it was marginally borderline
at best.  The fact is 4kV is more than enough voltage for a conventional
coil to work.  Obviously, to get a conventional coil to work at high current
levels, a lot more thought and effort needs to go into the design of the
spark gap.

The Captain


 > Captain, In regards to the last email...
 >
 >  > I disagree whole heartedly.  Even 3kVAC is enough
 >  > for a reliable spark-gap
 >  > driven tesla coil.  Plus many of us, Ed Wingate,
 >  > Steve Ward, Gary Lau, and
 >  > others have built
 >  > very successful tesla coils utilizing only 4kVAC
 >  > transformers.  Theres more
 >  > than enough margin for reliable operation.
 >  >
 >  > The Captain "...
 >
 > While Steve Ward has made a very nice 142 watt mini
 > coil with a 4 thousand volt transformer, and others
 > with other succesful low voltage designs, does this
 > hold up for higher currents? Are these designs(
 > besides Ward's) high current? The 6,000 watt MOT coil
 > I was working on with Steve Ward had serious quenching
 > trouble even at 8Kv... at least when operating with
 > our sucker gap. My advice, like I said before, is to
 > go with higher voltage...
 >
 >
 > Steve K.
 >
 >
 >