Re: RE:Tesla Coil Grounding (was - Pig setup help.)

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

Original poster: Sean Taylor <sstaylor-at-uiuc.edu> 


>One technique that you could use when connecting the secondary ground 
>(i.e. the RF ground) to the safety (i.e. green wire) ground is to connect 
>it via a choke that has high impedance at 50 kHz (i.e. the TC operating 
>frequency) but low impedance at 60 Hz.  The choke should be able to take 
>the full fault current of the HV side of the transformer.
>
>This way, if you get a primary to secondary short, via either dropping 
>something conductive on it (it happens!) or with a streamer connecting in 
>an ugly way, you've got a low impedance ground for the 60 Hz 
>component.  The choke will keep the RF out of the building safety ground 
>system (generally a "good thing").

Sounds to me like it might work pretty well - possibly use a MOT for this 
(could use the primary, should have a fairly low reactance at 60 Hz, and 
should be pretty lossy at > 1 kHz - so you won't have much current through 
it, though it may saturate pretty quickly if there is a small amount of HF 
current.  Something to try out maybe while monitoring the current at low 
powers.

Sean Taylor
Urbana, IL