Original poster: Terry Fritz <vardin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Jim,
At 08:16 AM 11/26/2005, you wrote:
...........
If you want to "estimate" the voltage on your tesla coil from it's
physical design, your best bet is to measure the radius of
curvature. The voltage won't be much higher than the radius of
curvature in cm times 30 kV/cm, and will likely be lower (since
that's the max voltage for smooth sphere with nothing around it).
I have noticed that the "breakout voltage" does tend to correspond
to the radius of curvature and all. However, the top voltage can
then go substantially beyond that. If there is a lot of power
behind the arcs. Then the "breakout loading" is just not enough to
hold the voltage down. So it does not act like say a hard Zener
diode, but rather a Zener with a big resistor in series with it.