Re: Trial and error

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Steven,
           Too much time? 20 minutes? I'm reminded what Tesla said
about Edison's approach to design: something to the effect that he
..."proceded to diligently search for a needle in a haystack when a
little thought and calculation would have saved him 90% of his
labour..." or something pretty close to it. Experimenting is a lot of
fun and a great learning experience (been there, done that of course)
but if you are building something with a purpose, you could do better
than to spend 90% of your time debugging it and possibly throwing a
faulty design out altogether.
     Designing can be hard yakker and it doesn't get any easier as
one ages save that one has, if one has done the hard yards, a world
of experience to draw on. Getting something right first time and not
having to repeat one's efforts is most gratifying. My personal
philosophy on design is that if you can't justify the inclusion of
every component and its value, the job is not done properly. The coil
I mentioned in my post (Coil 5 in the photos I posted) was a simple
test of everything I had learnt about coil design to that point. The
first light results were as startling as they were rewarding. By way
of contrast I should post a photo of an earlier coil which used
exactly the same transformer and primary capacitance. Watch my space
on Terry's website.

Malcolm

On 4 Apr 2005, at 13:03, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Steven Steele" <sbsteele@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Has anyone ever told you, you have too much time on your hands?
> I get it all the time.
>     I suck at designing stuff. Whenever I actually draw the stuff I'm
> building, It's just a waste of time and effort. Nothing ever turns out
> how I designed it. I always end up improvising. It's fun to improvise.
> And you know what they say, Ignorance is bliss! :) I'll make you a
> deal. If you make a TC whithout calculting first, I'll make one after
> doing the calculations first. I'll even count the number of turns on
> my secondary. Or, maybe not. I don't know if I have enough time or
> money to do that. I've been working on it all semester, and it's
> expensive. The wire for the secondary alone cost me $25, The caps $54,
> and with the number of times I've redone the primary, I don't know how
> much that's cost, but it's cost alot.Although, my NST only cost $10.
> :)
>
>
>                                    Steven Steele
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> To:
> <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Sunday, April 03, 2005 8:21 PM Subject: Re:
> Trial and error
>
>
> >Original poster: "Malcolm Watts" <m.j.watts@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> >On 3 Apr 2005, at 12:31, Tesla list wrote:
> >
> > > Original poster: "Steven Steele" <sbsteele@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> > > Have any of you guys ever just built a good TC by trial and error?
> > > Or do ya'll always do quantom physics calculations first? LOL.
> > >                                   Steven Steele
> >
> >My best coil was designed on the back of an envelope (literally!)
> >over a cup of tea during a 20 minute tea break. I resonated at
> >exactly the frequency it was designed to do so and, most crushing of
> >all for the relativistic afficionados, was designed using simple
> >lumped parameters. I did make room for consideration of losses due to
> >skin/proximity effects but a decision to spacewind with a 1:1
> >wire/space ratio plus a suitable wiresize for its (lowest) frequency
> >of operation based on a simple guideline kept the quantum genie
> >firmly corked up in its bottle.
> >
> >Malcolm
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>