Marx Generator Article, Spark Length

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

Original poster: Greg Leyh <lod-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

Interesting article, the home-brew triggered gap is especially neat. Marx 
Generators have traditionally faired poorly against Tesla Coils
in terms of raw spark length, since their slow firing rates squelch
the wonderful shot-to-shot buildup that Tesla Coils enjoy.
Replacing the sparkgaps and charging resistors with solid-state switches
however might allow the Marx Bank to be a serious contender in the
'arc-length vs power' arena.  Solid-state switching would allow the Marx
to run well up into the 100's of  Hz, allowing exploitation of the shot-to-shot
buildup effect.  Below is a link to some recent prototype development work
towards this end:

http://www-group.slac.stanford.edu/esd/PESC04_Paper.pdf

A 550kV[peak] coil [the 120L50K at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard] can
generate about a 25' arc at 360 BPS.  I'm keen to find out what a 500kV
Marx Bank can do at the same rep rate into a suitably elevated electrode.

-GL


>Original poster: Bob Wroblewski <bwroblewski-at-yahoo-dot-com>
>Hey y'all
>
>   In the current issue (July 2004) of Conformity magazine 'The
>engineer's guide to worldwide regulatory compliance' there is a feature
>article titled 'Build Your Own Marx Generator' by Mike Harrison of the
>UK. It features three projects aptly named Marx1, Marx2 and (you get
>the idea).
>
>  If you don't subscribe to this fine magazine, fear not, just use this
>handy link
>http://www.conformity-dot-com
>to find yet another link as the article's title to view the PDF or go
>directly to the article by the following link.
>http://www.conformity-dot-com/0407build.pdf
>
>  Important notice: This topic passes the Terry test for posting on the
>list because Tesla coils are mentioned in the first paragraph, indeed
>the very first sentence of the article, whew!
>
>Enjoy,
>Bob Wroblewski
>Dracut, MA



http://www-group.slac.stanford.edu/esd/PESC04_Paper.pdf