As a public service announcement for any new coilers to this list,
what would be the consequences of being hit by the streamer output
of your fearful "PIRANHA" and its high currents. Would this design
be ideal for first time builders?
Karl
On Aug 26, 2006, at 8:01 PM, Tesla list wrote:
Original poster: Vardan <vardan01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi All,
I have been working on a powerful version of the SISG Tesla
coil. I call it the "PIRANHA". Although it has had many forms, it
is finally getting to a point nearing being "done", so I thought I
would give an update...
It uses a single MOT and two of Mark Dunn's SISG boards. Firing
voltage is somewhat adjustable by shorting sections of the SISG
firing circuit with small brass bolts. I don't have all the parts
to run at full power yet, but it can easily hit 28 inches at 67%
voltage at low BPS. Break rate is "whatever it feels like" ;-) but
about 60 to 360 BPS depending on the variac setting. Firing
voltage is 2400V to 7200V in 300V increments.
Right now I don't have the right resistors and I really "should"
make a new MMC for it, but every thing runs as planned. At full
power it should near 45 inch arcs to ground. Some of the specs follow:
Typical:
240 BPS
6300Vfire
314kV peak output
33 Arms primary current(!)
650 Apeak primary current
2 x 8000V 330nF primary MMC caps in series
11 amps AC line current at 87% power factor.
Input voltage 100 - 110 VAC (keeps MOT out of saturation)
Actual power delivered to the streamer is about 450 watts. Earlier
testing has shown the SISG coils like higher BPS at some advantage
to arc length so this does all that easily. It's just about as
much power as you can safely pull from a MOT without blowing
everything up ;-) Primary RMS current is very high! At 33 amps
RMS each IGBT will dissipate about 22 watts. Not a big deal with a
fan breeze. The present MMC will burn up anyway ;-) So full power
but "short" runs unless I want to spring $140 for a new super high
RMS current MMC at twice the voltage. I'll burn this one up first :o))
The charging circuit is "new and improved" now. The old 1000 ohm
resistor system would burn off 700W!!! But the solution was
trivial to simply place the charge resistors so the SISG shorts
them out during firing. Now they are 100 ohm resistors burning off
just 50 watts of power ;-)) This also make a dual MOT system
possible with very high RMS current parts! One could probably make
a big pig system like this too. You don't really need a ballast
anymore. The RMS current can easily be reduced as one wishes
too. With higher voltage, you don't really need big primary
currents, but there is no reason not to push it since the MOTs can
supply more current than one can use ;-)) The schematic is here:
http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/PIRANHA-SCH.pdf
There is not much to it all all!! Just two simple resistors, two
BIG microwave diodes, and a dual primary cap along with the
SISG. Note that this system will NOT work with a standard spark
gap! You get bonus points if you know "why" ;-))
Here are pictures of the "engine". Everything is bolted to an 11 x
14 inch piece of plywood:
http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/pictures/PIRANHA-001.JPG
http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/pictures/PIRANHA-002.JPG
All the files are here if you want to dig around:
http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/
But only these probably mean anything...
http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/ScanTesla8/output.txt
http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/MandK/PIRANHA.txt
Cheers,
Terry