Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: Steve Ward <steve.ward@xxxxxxxxx>
Terry,
I suggest you retune your primary to get rid of that primary notch.
Tuning it lower will make the primary ring up continuously, and will
give longer sparks, though you wont see them till you have many cycles
running.
I cant imagine how that minor phase shift on the very first cycle
would matter. I think what matters more is that your primary current
is notching about a cycle later for the longer sparks. Have you tried
tuning the primary lower? This seems to lengthen the time between
notches in the primary current (until you get to 0 notches).
The notches mean that the system is tuned in a way that at some
point transfers all the stored energy to the secondary system.
This results in operation, before breakout, as in a conventional
capacitor-discharge Tesla coil. Without notches, the driver frequency
is close to one of the resonances of the system. The output
voltage may get higher, but the input current invariably gets
disproportionally higher, and some of the energy never leaves
the primary circuit. A system operting in this way can always
be redesigned to produce the same output voltage, and energy,
faster and with less input current, with notches in the primary
current and voltage. After breakout, if the driver is kept running,
the notches disappear.
Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz