Large Tesla Coil Construction - Continued Progress

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Original poster: "Cameron B. Prince" <cplists@xxxxxxxxxx>

Hey guys,

I finally got my 60A service installed in my garage and was able to test my
control panel today. The saturable reactors worked very nicely I must say. I
setup the pole transformer with some copper wire forming a crude jacob's
ladder. I plugged in the master power cable and throw the 60A breaker to the
on position. I ran the variac up till my meter showed about 210 VAC then I
heard some faint static sounds. I powered up the DC power supply and ran the
voltage up. When I got to about 50 VDC, an arc formed and began running up
the wires.

I ran the voltage up on both the variac and the DC power supply until I was
getting 6" to 8" arcs across the upper end of the gap. After a few minutes,
the wire began laying over as it got hot and began to melt. I changed to
some bronze wire and it lasted somewhat longer before doing the same. I
didn't have a suitable amp meter to tell me how much current was being drawn
by the pole ransformer,
but I ran the system for several minutes with thick, orange arcs and the
reactors got slightly warm with the control coil at around 100VDC @ 300mA. I
think they will be fine for my ballast but I plan to experiment with the
large resistor too.

I also completed the wrapping of the foam toroid, you can see pictures of it
and the wiring of the control panel on my coil page here:

http://www.epitra.com/tesla/index.html

I look forward to any comments or suggestions.

Thanks,
Cameron