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Re: [TCML] A new guy with a primary threaded through holes



LOL, I have made that mistake before. =0 

I don't fully understand this L's and C's business. Are there any closeup pictures or napkin diagrams that could help me out? 

Thanks, 
John "Jay" Howson IV 

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "THOMAS RYCKMANS" <thomas.ryckmans@xxxxxxxxxx> 
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx> 
Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2010 1:02:26 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: Re: [TCML] A new guy with a primary threaded through holes 

You have to redo all, it is wound the wrong way round! 

No, seriously, it's not. Great job you did, I tried this way a long time 
ago, found threading very difficult (after drilling of course...). So I just 
removed a slice from my "L"s to transform the holes into "C" s. Forming the 
copper was finished in the matter off miuntes after that 

Thomas 

On 18 May 2010 02:55, Joe Mastroianni <joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: 

> 
> My primary coil - http://gallery.me.com/iceowl 
> 
> It is with no small degree of chagrin that I note Greg Leyh will not be 
> appearing at this week's Cal. Maker Faire. Were it not for his 
> demonstrations last year I would not be reading this list now, and typing 
> with raw fingers after threading 42' of 1/4" copper tubing through 96 
> stanchion holes. I am in process of creating my first coil thanks to Greg 
> and his small 20' purple arcs that spanned a big chunk of the show floor. 
> 
> Alas, even the wife was so taken by Greg's display that she consented to my 
> coiling. Even encouraged me. Is even helping. Four hands winding the 
> copped through the holes worked better than two. This is how it starts, I 
> guess. 
> 
> Ebay luck shone down upon me a few months ago and I scored 15/30 NPT. I 
> promptly built a jacob's ladder, and just as promptly grew bored with it. 
> Consequently I have been amassing parts to build my first coil. The 
> garage is beginning to fill with those white/red/blue Priority Mail boxes. 
> I can barely get the car in. After a trip to TAP plastics and an evening 
> throwing numbers into JAVATC I decided to start building. Now there is no 
> room for the car at all. 
> 
> Previously, I had bought an 18 page paper written by a guy who went through 
> the mechanical structure of a static spark gap coil, and he advocated using 
> plastic cutting board material for the stanchions, and using 4. Four 
> seemed to offer less structural integrity than 6, and 6 (or 8) looked 
> better. I decided that it would be very difficult to thread the copper 
> around 8 stanchions placed 45 degrees apart because of friction and also, 
> the 1/2" polycarbonate would force the copper to follow a straight line 
> through its 1/2" length, which I felt might necessitate lots of bending. So 
> 6. I decided on 6. 
> 
> I built 6 stanchions to hold the primary by cutting "L" shaped pieces from 
> 1/2" polycarbonate/Lexan I got from the Tap plastics cast off bin. With my 
> drill press I built a jig out of wood which allowed me to precisely drill 15 
> holes in the long leg of the "L". I drilled 5/16" holes and stepped them 
> inward by a couple 32nds on each subsequent stanchion to account for the 
> spiral winding. There is no engineering involved in my decision to drill 
> 5/16" holes other than I knew I wanted a hole bigger than the O.D. of the 
> 1/4" tubing and the only bit for drilling plastic they had at Tap plastics 
> that was bigger than 1/4" and smaller than 1/2" was 5/16". Turned out to 
> be fortuitous. 
> 
> That evening I subscribed to pupman.com - which I had not previously 
> subscribed to because, well, no pictures. What a massive mistake. I 
> learned at about 2AM on Saturday morning that it would be impossible to 
> thread the copper through the 1/2" polycarbonate. Several had tried and 
> failed, as evident from their exasperated postings on this auspicious site. 
> 
> But I had already made my investment in time and $$. So my choices were to 
> toss out what I had done and go the 
> LDPE-with-"C"-shaped-notches-instead-of-holes route, or beaver on mindlessly 
> as if I had never read the posts. 
> 
> The next morning acrylic cement I glued the stanchions to a lexan circle I 
> also got at Tap. When you use that acrylic cement it bonds pretty 
> completely. It's as if the plastic becomes one piece. This was also 
> fortuitous. 
> 
> At 2AM on Sunday morning I discovered some posts on pupman that described 
> some intrepid soul, some years ago, who actually accomplished what I was 
> about to try. Somewhat cryptically he said, "it's possible and I just did 
> it and it wasn't so hard". Though he did not describe his technique much 
> other than to mention the term "scootching". 
> 
> I have learned what "scootching" is. But just to be safe, and to allow for 
> extra play, I beveled (countersunk?) each of the holes about 1/8" with a 
> fine stone bit on a dremel. I figured this would make it easier to thread 
> the copper as it came in to each hole at an angle. 
> 
> When daylight broke I began threading the copper. Even though my stanchions 
> have more holes, I had decided to thread 13 clockwise turns. The 50' 
> section of copper I got came in a coil. I laid this coil over the 
> stanchions in the winding sense I desired and began threading the tubing 
> using the natural curve of the copper to follow the curve of the hole 
> pattern on my stanchions. The first 2 turns went swimmingly, and I wondered 
> what all the fuss was about. I put two hands on the tubing, forcing it 
> through the holes gently, turning it as if it was some sort of valve. I 
> could push the copper through the holes about 1/2" with each grunt. The 
> next 4 turns were a bit harder. And in fact, by the time the 4th turn was 
> through, I could only move the copper about 1/8" or maybe only a couple 
> millimeters with each effort of the hand. This took me about 90 minutes. 
> 
> With a cup of coffee in hand I took a rest break, read more pupman, and 
> discovered someone suggested using Windex as a lubricant. 
> 
> I will say it would have been completely impossible to thread the copper 
> through the holes without some form of lubricant. By the 5th turn the 
> friction was so great the coil could not be passed through the stanchions at 
> all. Slathering on windex - I suddenly had the ability to "scootch" the 
> coil clockwise about 1/16" with each twist. It didn't get much better than 
> this. In fact, it got worse. As I reached the inner turns of the coil, I 
> was squirting Windex into each hole pretty much with each turn of the coil. 
> By the time I got through the 10th turn, the coil was only rotating 1 or 2 
> millimeters with each "scootch". I had to manually twist each turn of the 
> coil individually, sometimes starting from the inside, sometimes from the 
> outside. 
> 
> I believe I have put six hours into the coiling of the copper. It was not 
> easy. The results seem to be aesthetically pleasing, and of course, it's 
> very structurally rigid, especially since the windex has all evaporated now. 
> 
> With regards, 
> 
> Joe 
> 
> 
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