Re: Low-power experiments with a DRSSTC

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Steve Ward" <steve.ward@xxxxxxxxx>

Antonio,

I find that producing (long) streamers has a dramatic impact on all of
my systems.  The primary current envelope never looks the same as it
does with sparks being produced.  The Q of the system seems to drop
off steeply, and this is reflected in the primary as a plateau of
primary current, and sometimes a near-notching condition (where as
before spark production, the primary current would continue to rise).
Ground sparks seem to present a different load all together, and may
result in the primary current climbing higher, or dropping off, it
depends a lot on the tuning.  Note that my systems use primary current
feedback, so driving the system from a fixed oscillator is probably a
different story.

Steve Ward

On 8/31/06, Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Original poster: acmq@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
> Hi:
>
> I have made some experiments to verify if my ideas about how to design a
> DRSSTC work as expected. A programmable signal generator makes an adequate
> driver for low-power excitation:
> http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/drsstc1.pdf
> The design procedure is described here:
> http://www.coe.ufrj.br/~acmq/tesla/drsstc.html
> It's interesting to observe that the same elements used for a regular Tesla
> coil work almost exactly for a DRSSTC. Only a small tuning adjustment is
> required, and losses and detuning affect both systems in similar ways.
> It remains to be verified how this works in producing sparks. If
> the Tesla coil works, and the waveforms are almost identical, the same
> results are expected.
> Note that I used sinusoidal input. Square wave input doesn't change
> much the waveforms.
>
> Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz