PIRANHA-III Power control? (fwd)

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Original poster: Gerry Reynolds <greynolds@xxxxxxxxxx>



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 16 Dec 2006 19:08:32 -0700
From: Terrell Fritz <terrellfone@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: PIRANHA-III  Power control?

Hi,

I am working on PIRANHA III issues today.  A dual MOT system that runs off 
a 120VAC 20A circuit with ease.  It is in the 8 foot arc to ground 
range...  About 2kW input at ~90% efficiency.

These coils like to run with the MOT input voltage at about 95-105 volts to 
stay out of the MOT saturation range which just waists precious 
current.  Normally that is done with a 15 -20 amp variac...

http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/PIRANHA-3/PIRANHA-III-001.gif

Variacs are very nice, but they are real heavy and not real "modern" or 
solid state.  The charging circuit (MOT / Primary Cap loop) is resonant too 
to drive up to a 15000 volt firing voltage...  But the waveforms are pretty 
"tame" and the power factor is excellent without any fiddling.

http://drsstc.com/~piranha/PIRANHA/PIRANHA-3/PIRANHA-III-002.gif

It would be super cool to use a beefy lamp dimmer circuit or some similar 
cheap but very reliable solid state thing to control power other than the 
variac.  The PIRANHA input section is very forgiving of sloppy input wave 
forms and all so no big deal there.  Ceiling fans are made for inductive 
loads...

I don't know much about dimmer circuits and such so I can't guess at what 
to do and feed the computer models well.  0:-|

If anyone knows what to do to make a cheap hardy dimmer type circuit that 
could run two MOTs (~2kW)  I am all ears ;-))

Cheers,

	Terry