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Re: [TCML] 1st Run
Looking at your photos it looks to me like you have 4 neons in parallel. I think you have too much power for a 4" secondary coil.
What size wire are you using on your secondary coil?
I think you should build a larger secondary coil using larger wire. I built a 6" TC once with 4 neons it was too much so I changed it to 3 neons. It burned holes in my secondary coil that looked like your photo. I was using 15K 30ma neons.
Build a larger secondary with larger wire. I think your secondary should be no smaller than 6" diameter maybe 8" for 4 neons and no shorter than 3 ft tall 950 turns of wire. I don't know what size wire your using but if you have plenty of wire you can wind 2 wires side by side and connect them in parallel at each end to make a taller coil other wise you need to buy different wire.
Check out my 6" TC it only has 3 neons in this photo. I built this on the work bench connected everything together with aligator clip wires for a test. It was making 52" streamers. The cap is .01 up. It has a RQ spark gap with 8 gaps and a variable speed vacuum fan. I had a ferrite choke coil on each HV terminal wound with 35 turns of #14 copper insulated house wire.
http://home.earthlink.net/~gary350/tc3.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~gary350/tc4.jpg
http://home.earthlink.net/~gary350/tesla2.jpg
-----Original Message-----
>From: nancylavoie@xxxxxxxxxxx
>Sent: Jul 18, 2010 8:36 PM
>To: Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [TCML] 1st Run
>
>Perhaps I'm wrong,and I'm sure someone will correct me,but from what I see in your photos,there's this big carriage bolt coming out of your endcap.It also appears as though you are using this as a ground for your secondary?Could be the culprit as with this configuration you are essentially introducing a wire on the other side of your secondary former causing the insulation to break down.Just a thought.
> Wyatt
>Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Miles Mauldin <teslamiles@xxxxxxx>
>Sender: tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx
>Date: Sun, 18 Jul 2010 12:58:42
>To: Tesla Coil Mailing List<tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: [TCML] 1st Run
>
>1st Run, not so good. Was really looking forward to seeing my work come to
>fruition but it was so short lived I didn’t even have a chance at the camera.
>On the first run I saw more than a dozen 15-18" streamers all around the top
>toroid, that was taping around the 9th turn. I didn’t realize how hot the
>primary would get. I could not touch the clamp on the primary for several
>minutes. Everything looked great at this point. I tuned a half turn in and
>started another run at about 60% power but didn’t see any streamers at all. In
>fact I started smelling something burning. At that point I turned everything off
>and found the source of the smell on the far side of the coil from me. The
>secondary had a catastrophic failure internally. Photos here ->
>http://www.cmnow.com/TeslaMan/1stRun/
>
>I guess I’m going to be winding another secondary but this time with a different
>design; I truly believe the design caused my failure and not some contaminate
>within the PVC tube. So maybe the correct design for a secondary coil is to not
>have any “ANY” external connections to the windings internally to the coil form.
>
>Best thing I can say about last night; Mr. Butters didn’t make a show….
>
>Next is always better.
>Miles M
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