RE: [TCML] LED Strobe Sync Idea

[Jeff Behary <electrotherapy@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

John,
 
It is interesting that in some of the early TC's, a few rare examples made extra provisions to allow the caps to fully charge before discharging - or to at least allow this adjustment if the operator knew what they were doing.  To find physical examples of these circuits is hard - a lot of times, when machines were mass-produced this feature was left out - probably thought of as "unnecessary" [at the expense of efficiency] if the unit would spark at all without them.
 
To give an example, many of the early units were "kicking coils".  Simple electromagnet, interrupter or rotary break/condenser/Tesla Coil.  Most did the simple circuit of a make-and-break to charge the cap and discharge it into the Tesla Coil.  A few though, had a combination of an interrupted circuit (to charge the cap) and a spark gap (or modified secondary interrupter) to discharge the cap into the Tesla Coil (but only when fully charged).  There was some form of mechanical manipulation of contacts or gaps to give an extra moment of time to allow the cap to reach a full charge before discharging!  
 
In one of Kinraide's rotary breaks, the entire assembly of the break mechanism (which was fully-adjustable in itself) was located on a base that could be loosen and swiveled 360 degrees while the coil was in operation.  In this way, you could control the speed of the motor to control the break rate, and rotate the base (that held the contacts which were opened or closed with the motor) to adjust where in the circuit the break was made or broken at that speed.
 
With some of the early lower frequency coils (50 kHz) where .25 or .50 mfd caps were used (at 1 or 2kV), this little timing mechanism may have done wonders for the output of the coil.
Now that the repro coils are built, I think next will be the creation of these interrupters to see what happens, and if there are any improvements or differences in how the coils operate...
 
Jeff
> There's a misconception out there that the gap should fire at the> peak of the incoming AC waveform but that's not correct. Instead> the gap should fire when the cap has a full charge. This usually> occurs about 90 degrees away from the peak of the incoming> AC waveform, but it can vary with the particular NST and cap> value. The final adjustment has to be done by trial and error,> (unless a remote phase adjuster is used).> Some sort of ball-park pre-adjustment may be helpful. Not only> does the adjustment need to be done while the coil is running> (or by trial and error), but it needs to be done at full power.> The correct setting for a low power, will be different than> the correct setting for high power (due to non-linear NST> characteristics I suppose).
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