RE: [TCML] Oscilloscope Tuning, Need help, please look

["Lau, Gary" <Gary.Lau@xxxxxx>]

I would agree with Phillip - the math and scope measurements will just get you in the ball park, but the final adjustment is always made by changing primary taps and comparing performance.  

And in the interest of academic correctness, realize that any formulaic or measured results will not be valid to 6 or 7 decimal places.  I'm pretty sure your secondary coil doesn't have exactly 841.535 turns.  I know that you didn't mean to suggest that it did, but a proper analysis should not include numbers that suggest a greater precision than is possible.

Re.:
"Can you successfully measure the resonant frequency of the secondary without a toroid?"  and
"Does the LC circuit refer to the toroid capacitance only, or can the secondary's self capacitance create the LC circuit? Normally you would add both the toroid and secondary's capacitance which makes me think this still works, just excluding the topload."

There is really no point in measuring the resonant frequency of the secondary coil without the intended top load, except for academic interest.  The secondary C-self and the toroid's C-self don't add together directly, as a portion of each C-self is shielded by the other, depending on their proximity to one another.  There are modeling programs that do an excellent job of calculating the final resonant frequency, given a complete dimensional specification of the coil, top load, and the surrounding environment.

Regards, Gary Lau
MA, USA

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On
> Behalf Of Phillip Slawinski
> Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 9:47 AM
> To: Tesla Coil Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [TCML] Oscilloscope Tuning, Need help, please look
> 
> Andrew,
> 
> Are you just looking to get the coil in tune, or do you specifically
> want to use an oscilloscope to tune the coil.  The time tested
> approach of moving the tap on the primary is the *best* way to get
> long sparks.  If that's all you seek then you may want to just do that
> instead of scope tuning.  Tuning the coil with a scope is going to get
> you close to in-tune, but the only way to really tell if you are in
> tune is by observing the spark output at various tap settings on the
> primary.
> 
> -Phillip Slawinski
> 
> On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 02:16, Andrew Robinson <teslamad@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >     Looking again for more help with scope tuning. After a fairly successful
> > afternoon in the lab I think we may actually be getting somewhere with this,
> > but could some veterans out there confirm our results please. Might be
> > helpful for any new guys out there too so take a look! What we're going for
> > here is either you looking at it and laughing at how far off we are, or
> > actually (hopefully) telling us we're on the right path. The link below is
> > for a PDF doc we created describing our results. There are some questions in
> > there too. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
> >
> > http://host.atomiklan.com/tesla/report.pdf
> >
> > Regards,
> > Andrew Robinson
> > _______________________________________________
> > Tesla mailing list
> > Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Tesla mailing list
> Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla
_______________________________________________
Tesla mailing list
Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla