Re: Big Toroids, collective conscious brain storm

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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

Hi Adam,

Back when I was in high school (around 30 years ago) ;^)
I built a Van de Graff generator (with a little help from Dad)
from plans from a book I checked out of my local library. Anywho,
as for constructing the discharge sphere, the plans suggested getting
a plastic glode cover for an outdoor lamp and coating it inside and out
with silver aluminum paint. The apperture hole was to be used for the
entrance of the belt and roller assembly. I followed these instructions with
a 12" diameter lamp cover and a quart of siver colored paint, noting that
metallic aluminum dust was the pigment agent. This plan did work
for the VDG but the discharge sparks would knock off visible flakes
of aluminum powder into the air and after enought run time the con-
ductive surface would get "gaps" in it. This caused a "shock" on a few
occasions when I would grab the globe by the entrance hole. Since the
conductive surface would have these gaps due to the paint being blown
by the discharges, the resultant seperated "islands" of conductive sur-
face would act as the plates of a capacitor and I would get a nasty lit-
tle shock when picking it up. :^0

The bottom line is that if the very low currents of the static discharges
could damage the conductive paint surface to this extent, then the much
more powerful discharges of a T. coil would almost certainly quickly
desintergrate the same. I'm sure there are condcutive paints that would
stand up better to this abuse, but for a price $$$.

David

----- Original Message ----- From: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 7:12 AM
Subject: RE: Big Toroids, collective conscious brain storm


> Original poster: Yurtle Turtle <yurtle_t@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> Years ago, I built a drier duct toroid, and covered it
> with drywall mud. I got it real smooth, then painted
> it with a metallic paint. I don't remmeber which kind
> of paint I used, but it ended up looking more like a
> crackle tube than a tesla coil. The arcs never really
> left the toroid, but rather ate away the paint, much
> the way a CD on a tesla coil does. It was really cool,
> but may not be what you're after. Has anyone tried
> using metallic paint on a topload?
>
> Adam
>
> --- Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Original poster: "Jim Mora" <jmora@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > Terry,
> >
> > You did quite a lot of electrostatic modeling. How
> > important is the actual
> > complete toroid considering the inside is a flat
> > plane generally?
> >
> > I just got of the phone with a boat fiberglass
> > repair expert. Suppose we
> > were to make a large alum duct toriod as usual on a
> > large flat surface, and
> > wrap it in fiberglass or yet to be discussed fabric.
> > They have epoxy spray
> > guns and could gel coat them for real smoothness and
> > keep it thin enough to
> > be unnecessarily too heavy.
> >
> > I liked the idea of nickel paint they use on cheaper
> > plastic PC covers for
> > RF shielding. Hey it Passes class B or C FCC, should
> > work great. Anybody got
> > a cover or some of this paint to use as a target for
> > testing?
> >
> > Jim Mora
> >