Re: [TCML] July 4th and why not to be in a hurry

["Phillip Slawinski" <pslawinski@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bart,

I figured this is what you meant by field control, but I was not entirely
sure.  Would a breakout point have helped at all, or would that detract from
the experience too much [not allowing streamers to craw all over the top
load].  This previous weekend when I was playing with my coil in the garage
I was able to run the coil next to a wall that was well within the range of
the maximum streamer length by using a breakout point.

Very interesting coil you have there.  Certianly you have the the most
computerized classic coil I've heard of.  The variable frequency drive is a
nice touch.  How do you vary the speed while the coil is running?

On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 9:19 PM, bartb <bartb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Hi Phillip,
>
> I may not even have the term correct. But I look at "field control" (old
> term) as the control of how the spark is formed, where it's going, etc.
> Maybe spark control is a better term.
>
> Normally, the spark is single channel and moves along the toroid. It does
> stop and breakout elsewhere in a couple seconds, but the spark usually moves
> outward and down. When it moves "down", I like it to stay off the primary.
> This is easy to do with a smaller coil in a garage where the air is still
> and becomes very ionized. When outdoors however and especially in windy
> conditions like we had, it's difficult to control the spark channel. In the
> case of the July 4th runs, I eventually had to crank up power to get the
> sparks out and away from the primary. Most hits then went to the garage door
> about 8 feet away, some went down and hit the ground, and some went back and
> hit the primary (but far less often than the run in the video). The run in
> the video I was trying to play with voltage versus current keeping the power
> about the same, and to no good result.
>
> I smoked the brushes in the same ballast variac 2 years ago on a 4th of
> July night, so that is why I was trying to do what I could at a moderate
> power level (I didn't want to smoke the variac again). But after that run, I
> decided to go for it. It did much better, but I didn't run it as long.
> Another problem was bps. When you saw those multiple streamers, that's when
> I turned the bps down low (adjusting voltage and current), and then I would
> increase bps to see if my voltage and current swapping would help (it
> didn't). Normally, the coil likes about 350 to 360 bps, but I installed a
> new VFD the day before and didn't have it set to go past 80Hz (another hurry
> incident). I also use a PLC to control the main contactor, deadman switch,
> enable circuit, etc. Well, I lost the program in a computer that died
> earlier this year, so I had to rewrite the program (that was another task I
> had to do the day before). There were a lot of "little" things like that
> which got in my way, so needless to say, I started scrambling just to get
> the coil to function at all. And that's pretty much when it got dark, so I
> just left it as is. It happens from time to time. Luckily, no major damage.
> Although, I did burn off 2 primary ty-wraps which was an odd thing (I think
> this occurred from both a top load spark hit and auto-transformer action as
> it occurred about 10 inches past the tap point into the unused turns of
> which there were 3).
>
>
> Take care,
> Bart
>
> Phillip Slawinski wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 7:22 PM, bartb <bartb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> Hi Phillip,
>>>
>>> Mainly, the field control was not good and the primary was under attack!
>>> That's mainly what I wanted to show.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> When you say field control what exactly are you referring to?
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Yea, hard to see most of it as the guy taking the video was all over the
>>> place. Had I known he had a video camera, I would have had him use my
>>> tripod. But nonetheless, it's one thing to get a few strikes to the
>>> primary,
>>> and quite another for the primary be the main focus. Hit's like that  and
>>> that often can do damage. So I was trying to show what "not" to allow if
>>> you
>>> can avoid it. BTW, that secondary is a 1760 turn coil.
>>>
>>> Take care,
>>> Bart
>>>
>>> Phillip Slawinski wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> It's hard to see what's wrong with the coil in this video.  I'd consider
>>>> that a good run if my coil was running like that ;).  Of course it's
>>>> hard
>>>> to
>>>> see anything at all in that video.  It would have been nice if the
>>>> camera
>>>> had been fixed, and there was less zooming.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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