Re: Magnetic quenching.

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

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"Hello Coilers,

I too would be interested in a dialog on magnetic quenching of gaps.
My hyperbaric gap should lend itself to such a trial, and I'm going
to need a good quenching gap to use with the "mini-maggy" that I've
been building over the long, cold Canadian winter.

I bought about a dozen rare-earth magnets from Lee Valley Tools and
I'm going to try them out.  They are disk shaped, about the size of
a quarter, but roughly three times thicker, and are VERY strong!!!
I made the mistake of getting some flesh between two I was playing
with and ended up with a nasty blood blister.

I was thinking of making up a horseshoe shaped piece of metal that
would form the return path for the flux, and then put the gap into
the space between the created poles.  I figured on using about six
magnets in total, three on each side of the spark gap and aligned
perpendicular to the electrodes.

I'll be more than happy to share my results with the list, and I'm
looking forward to reading any and all ideas that others have.

73, Weazle, VE3EAR/VE3WZL"

	You're on the right track with respect to use a magnetic pole structure
to concentrate the flux transversely across the gap.  Those magnets have
a pretty low curie temperature so you want to keep them isolated from
the temperature of the discharge.

Ed