Re: first coil

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

Original poster: dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com 


Sorry Nolan, I disagree.  12 AWG wire will work perfectly fine with a
15kV/60mA.  In fact, a year ago I performed a test in which I would compare
output of my
15kV/60mA coil with using 4 AWG stranded welding wire (the orange stuff),
and using 14 AWG HV wire.  In both tests, I got exactly the same output from
my coil.  There was no difference period!  Now if you were using 12 or 14
AWG wire and your wire lengths were like 5 feet plus, then thats different.
But if you keep your connections as short
as possible, 12-14 AWG wire will work fine with no decrease in performance.

Of course, larger powered coils will need much larger wire, but with a
15kV/60mA running only a 0.0106uF to 0.0257uF capacitor, short length 12 AWG
or 14 AWG will work fine.

Dan



 > Hello Dan and Mathew,
 >
 >      As Dan said you can use 12awg or 14awg wire for the tank gap, well I
 > wouldn't totally agree with that! sure you can use 12 or 14 awg g wire
going
 > from the nst to the tank gap you could even go as low as 30awg!, but not
 > from the tank gap to the spark gap and the primary coil! You will have a
 > fairly high powered coil on ur hands with a 15/60 nst configuration. You
do
 > need heavy duty wire in the tank circuit aka from cap to spark gap to
 > primary id say atleast 6awg would be good, the tank circuit will
experience
 > hundreds of amps of current depending on your bang size coming from the
cap.
 > on my mini coil running on a 7500vac -at- 60ma (that's 450watts 1/2 of the
 > power you will be using) I used 12awg wire for the tank circuit, a classic
 > newbie mistake. On short runs the wires got fairly hot not enough to melt
 > the plastic shielding but enough to merit concern, also remember when
copper
 > heats up it increases the resistance of the wire so you will lose some
 > power. You also could use a thin strip of metal, one inch wide would be
good
 > aslong as it wasn't paper thin, you could use Al tape the heavy duty stuff
 > fold it in half sticky to stick side and that would work fine. If you used
2
 > 10awg wires in parelle you would be golden. If you want some HV wire just
 > buy some vinyl tubing and put regular wire through it, should be good for
up
 > to 20kv. Oh also 1/4 watt resistors are fine!, one per cap will work.
 >
 > Hope this Helps!
 > Nolan Moore
 >
 > http://hot-streamer-dot-com/nolan/
 >
 >
 > ----- Original Message -----
 > From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
 > To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
 > Sent: Thursday, October 02, 2003 2:22 PM
 > Subject: RE: first coil
 >
 >
 >  > Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com>
 >  >
 >  >
 >  >
 >  > Regular 12 AWG wire will work fine for this.  I use 14 AWG high voltage
 >  > wire on my 15kV/60mA and get great results.
 >  > People will claim you need super large wire in your primary tank
 >  > circuit, but for a 15kV/60mA you can easily get by with
 >  > 12-14 AWG no problems.  Regular electrical wire is fine as long as you
 >  > keep it isolated from ground etc...  No need for expensive high voltage
 >  > wire.
 >  >
 >  > 10meg 1/4W resistors are fine if you have more than 10 resistors in
 >  > series in your MMC.  Thats what most use anyways.
 >  > Continuously, 10 resistors in series at 21000kV (peak voltage of
15kVAC)
 >  > would be about 0.44W per resistor, but the 21000kV is not continous so
 >  > power dissipation will be much less.
 >  >
 >  > Dan
 >  >
 >  >
 >  >  > Hey y'all
 >  >  >
 >  >  > I'm about to start building my first coil and I have a few
 >  >  > questions... (bet
 >  >  > you never heard that one, huh? *grin*)
 >  >  >
 >  >  > What kind of wire can I use to wire the main components
 >  >  > together?  Can I use
 >  >  > regular 10ga. solid copper wire?  I have two 15kV 30mA
 >  >  > transformers for my
 >  >  > power supply.
 >  >  >
 >  >  > I have 22 .22uF capacitors for the capacitor bank that I'm
 >  >  > gonna string
 >  >  > together in series.  I was wanting to use 10meg 1/2w
 >  >  > resistors but I can
 >  >  > only find 10meg 1/4w resistors.  Will the 1/4w resistors work
 >  >  > to blead off
 >  >  > the charge in the capacitor bank if wired in parallel to each
 >  >  > capacitor?
 >  >  >
 >  >  > Once I get these answered I'll be able to start working on
 >  >  > putting all the
 >  >  > components together.  Any info would be greatly appreciated.
 >  >  > BTW, I'm in
 >  >  > metro Atlanta so if there are any local coilers around that
 >  >  > would want to
 >  >  > hang out at some point, just holler...
 >  >  >
 >  >  > Matthew
 >  >  >
 >  >  >
 >  >  >
 >  >
 >  >
 >
 >
 >
 >
 >