Hi Phil,Carbon tracks on the surface of a coil can be cleaned up easily (lightly sand and coat area). Same is true for the inside of the form (which should be checked). But, sometimes a carbon track can run on the inside of the windings and form wall surface. That requires unwinding the area to clean it up. For PVC, sometimes the carbon tracks can get pretty deep.
For the 4th of July, I was trying to get my new SISG coil running. Wednesday night, I tried to fire her up but fried my rectifier (poor choice of diodes as they had an amazingly low forward current, DOH!). So, I made a decision to install my 3-phase rotary. I spent all day Thursday working on that. I needed to raise the secondary to reduce coupling. The easiest way to do this was to remove bottom turns rather than use stand-offs and whatnot. The coil itself was 1780 turns, so it was actually good to remove a couple inches. Anyway, while unwinding 2 inches of turns from the bottom, I noticed a carbon track on the wall between windings. Luckily, it did not go beyond the 2 inch area so I was able to clean it up. However, had I not unwound the turns, I would have never known it was there.
Take care, Bart Phillip Slawinski wrote:
I set up my TC today to 'play'. I think I made a big mistake. I accidentally had the ungrounded low voltage lead from the secondary inside the coil form. To make a long story short my secondary PVC form now has some nice tree-like black tracks on the inside of it. The TC still works, and puts out streamers to about three and a half feet or more. Is there a way to clean up these tracks? Should I just abandon that secondary and wind a new one? I've got plenty of wire and plenty of PVC. Should I stop coiling for making such a stupid mistake? _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla
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