Re: [TCML] Strike rings - to use or not to use; was: Newbie Grounding Question

["David Rieben" <drieben@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jeff,

Although a properly desinged coil should see a noted decrease
in strikes to the primary and secondary coils as opposed to an
improperly desinged one, I do not see any practical design com-
pletely eliminating this issue. My toroid was (still is) 56" in diame-
ter and the outermost turn of my primary is about 40" in diameter.
The strike ring is only slightly larger in diameter than the outermost
primary winding (probably around 41" diameter) but sits about 3.5"
above the plane of the primary. "I" would consider this to be proper
coil design geometry to minimize primary or secondary strikes and the
strike ring sticking up ~4" higher and closer to the toroid would be the
only possible "Achilles heal" that I could see in my design. Yet because
of fairly high winds, I still had a streamer to "blow" back into the side
of the lower part of the primary on that day. You can see my coil setup
at: http://www.teslauniverse.com/members/drieben/  for further details.
Although I have done a few modifications to my control panel since
posting these pics, the basic coil tank circuit and the 15 to 20 kVA
power feed is still the same.

David Rieben


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Jeff W. Parisse" <workshop@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2007 1:30 PM
Subject: Re: [TCML] Strike rings - to use or not to use;was: Newbie 
Grounding Question


> A strike ring is just an invitation for the arcs to travel downward. A 
> properly designed Tesla coil, geometrically speaking, will not hit its own 
> primary or secondary coils. Sometimes, all that is needed is a larger 
> toroid. I switched from a 48" to a 59" toroid (5.5" more overhang) on my 
> 20kVA coil and solved all coil strikes.
>
> The tried and true method for protecting old equipment (i.e. Tesla coils) 
> from overvoltage is to employ ball gaps set to fire just above the 
> circuit's operating voltage. I use 1" brass balls (McMaster-Carr or 
> others) because the old ball gap charts that are used to determine gap 
> spacing usually use a common ball diameter such as one inch. I place the 
> gap between ground and the circuit section I'm trying to protect.
>
> Jeff
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tesla mailing list
> Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla


_______________________________________________
Tesla mailing list
Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla