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Re: Racing Sparks



Original poster: "David Rieben" <drieben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi,

I believe what Mark is referring to is when the resonant peak voltage is reached somewhere along the secondary coil BEFORE the top
winding of the secondary. This is basicaly improper
tuning which indeed can cause that pesky phenomenon.
Racing sparks can also be caused by improper (too
tight) primary/secondary coupling. If this is the cause,
the problem can be fixed by just raising the secondary
coil in 1/4" to 1/2" increments relative to the plane of the primary coil. Keep raising the secondary until the racing sparks stop and you will have optimum coupling.
BTW, from my personal experience, optimum primary/
secondary coupling can be fairly critical, so you may have
to play with it a bit to get it just right. Also, make sure that the surface of the secondary is wiped clean of any possibly
conductive dust or trash and is DRY.


David Rieben


----- Original Message ----- From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> To: <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 4:31 PM Subject: Re: Racing Sparks


Original poster: Mark Barlow <barlow_tesla_lst@xxxxxxxxx>

From my personal experience with racing sparks, I have only seen them occur when my Tesla coil is excited at a 3rd or 5th and so on ODD Harmonic. To fix this I increased the size of my capacitor bank and primary coil this lowered the frequency down to the 1st harmonic of the coil and stopped the racing sparks. Hope this helps and good luck!

- Mark

Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Original poster: tesla popp

I just set up my "Devian" coil. This coil was
originally designed to be very small and powerful.
the problem is that i cant even power it up 15%
without the sparks racing across the secondaries
surface. I have 5 coats of poly on it already. I
also played with to toroid in some failed attempt to
fix the problem.
How can i get sparks to stop racing across the
surface?