Original poster: Terry Fritz <vardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Hi,
How does the safety gap drop the excess voltage across the caps any better than the spark gap is already doing when the spark and safety gaps are in parallel? Thanks Malcolm
The safety gap is normally useless... In fact, it may be useless in your case. Back in the good old days of caps blowing up, resonant size caps, "new guys" that had no idea at all what they were doing... Safety gaps were sort of a last resort to keep them from blowing up the NST. But with MMCs, LTR cap sizes, and new folks that know a whole lot to begin with, that danger is vastly reduced.
Just resist the temptation to increase the main gap size to get larger arcs. But LTR MMCs should fix that risk anyway...
BTW - Someone mentioned not to short Tesla coil caps directly... If there is nothing to limit the current (like a primary coil) the capacitor current is probably 5,000 to 10,000 amps into a dead short. That will damage the caps.
Cheers,
Terry