Re: Giant DC coil to run in Australia

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: syd <tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Greg,

First I'd like to say that your tesla coil work has been a huge inspiration 
to me.. so thanks!
The charging reactor that I was discussing as 'not finished' was for a DC 
resonant charging scheme like you have used. For current limiting I built 
three limiting reactors that I use in series with each of the transformers. 
The plan was to use those limiters to set a maximum current, and then 
adjust power with the conjunction of resonant charging and break rate. With 
the DC reactor not built, and the resultant smaller charging voltage, I 
needed to adjust the limiters to pass much more current than I had 
originally planned in order to keep the DC line from sagging.

But anyway.. that part of the web site with all the construction notes is a 
couple years out dated. Since then I designed and built two DC charging 
reactors that are 2H each, which I intend to run in series. They're built 
and hipot tested, but I haven't had the resources to integrate them i.e. 
space and power to take measurements outside of a show environment.
When I get back from Australia I hope to update everything. Here's some specs:

Cpri   .191 uF
Lpri   ~38 uH
Lsec   66.1 mH
Res Freq. ~59 kHz

The limiting reactors were nominally set to 3.6 mH for 240V delta use. I've 
wanted to use 480V, but the EI cores that I've been using couldn't quite 
handle the 4 fold increase in inductance needed without saturating (1.8T 
with these.. 3% silicon grain oriented). So I built three more limiters so 
that I can use two in series for each transformer. This also gives me more 
window space for heavier gauge wire, AND I'll be running with lower current 
of course with the 480.

Incidentally, I posted one other page of pictures on my web site which 
includes a couple photos of the new monster spark gap that I just finished 
and shipped. It has two 16 inch rotors and achieves 5000 rpm. All the 
pspice simulations that I ran showed a dramatic benefit to short dwell 
time, so this should bring me down to about 60 usec.

syd klinge




Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: Greg Leyh <lod@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> Hi Syd,
>
> Neat website, I hadn't seen detailed photos of your coil and its 
> components before.
>
> The website mentioned that the charging reactor is not finished, and that 
> this is why the AC mains draw is 80-100kVA?  Yow!! I''m amazed that it can 
> run without a reactor at all; your rotary gap must love that.  ^_^
> It appears that the only thing limiting the charging current is the 
> impedance of the transformers and power feed.
> What is the Cpri value?  Surely there's some way we can arrange a suitable 
> charging reactor.
>
> -GL