Hey Tony..I was also excited about getting mine going for the first time too... but alas, nothing just a hum. But dont be totally bummed about a "no-show" streamer. I would start with a safety gap setting of 3/16" to 1/4" to start and have the main gap setting at 1/16" less than what the safety gap is set for. Since I dont know how your coil is set up, I would start with the primary tap at the furtherest outside turn and work towards the inside turn one at a time ( yup its time consuming but it works). If you have a variac, start it with he voltage set on 0 and increase slowly, look for arcs where there shouldnt be any, like around caps, wires near cases, secondary to primary flashovers, secondary running arcs( down the outside of the secondary). Listen to your coil, odd out of sync snapping or popping noises means there could be a problem. If your safety gap fires continously ( loud bright popping) you may want to open it up a tad, but not more than 1.5X the RSG width, you want to protect the NST as well as you can. By starting with a low voltage and slowly raising it via a variac, you can set the tuning in a safe "low level" voltage. Once you are getting streamers 12" or so you can start ramping the variac up to and past the 85+% and do the fine tuning of the primary. Remember, caps can hold a charge for some time and can bite you..... unplug your coil when making any adjustments.
Scot D Tesla list wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 16:30:54 -0800 From: Anthony R. Mollner <penny831@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> To: Tesla list <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> Subject: Party time I have completed my tesla coil and I'm ready to "tune" it up. What does everyone advise regarding the first time run for a 15/120 SRSG coil? What would be advised for the safety gap setting, the SRSG gap and enitial phase, voltage start up and even the primary setting? I'm looking forward to pushing that on button! Tony
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