[TCML] Hazards of Asynchronious arc gaps?

[Harvey Norris <harvich@xxxxxxxxx>]

Years ago I had a dual shaft assembly constructed to co-rotate two 6 inch diameter, 1/2 in. wide brass discs. A set of multiple size pulleys on the opposite ends of the shafts was connected by automotive V belts, which at the time I did not realize; these belts have a sort of metallic thread in them which resulted in arcing to the intervening v Belts between the pulleys. My co worker on these projects seen the assembly and made some modifications; first to use rubber bands to connect the pulleys, and then the mounting of saw blades on top of the brass discs and shaft spacing so that the arc issues between the tips of the saw blades when they coincide in timing during their rotation at a closest proximity of ~ 1/8 th of an inch. This entire assembly is slowly rotated by another AC variable speed motor at 5 hz or so. The first thing I am worried about is that V belt contact to one side of the high voltage source and its proximity on the motor side pulley
 to the expensive solid state electronics that run the motor. No arcing appears on the V belt so it appears to be a safe practice.  But what happened next may not be.
     I am using a 15,000 volt, 30 ma NST that empowers .02 uF, which consists of a  five series string of 7500 volt rated .1 uf oil based capacitors. My Co-worker has been playing with a conical design where in operation he noted the need for a slower rpm on the rotary arc gap.  He said he heard loud popping noises and then the second capacitor in the string mushroomed out. This happened to me before when once one of the caps accidentally knocked out of the string  during operation also puffed out in this fashion. My conclusion in this case however is that it is not good to have such a comparatively long intermitant abscence of primary arc gap functioning such as this saw blade design provides for; as now the distance between the arc gaps no longer control how far the caps charge up from their source before discharging across the gap, and certainly 1/8 of an inch minimal separation is certainly excessive to begin with. In any case since the problem
 appears to be solved with rubber bands between the rotating high voltage sources, I think I will have the saw blades removed and try a much closer proximity arrangement of  just the brass discs in co-rotation. I should be able then to also place magnets on either side of the arc for a magnetically quenched gap. Any comments concerning the virtues of magnetically quenched arc gaps would be appreciated.
Sincerely Harvey D Norris.


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