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Re: [TCML] Old TC restoration advice



Hi Dave,

Seems as if your best bet would be to try whipping together
the 4 MOTs that you referred to, although that may overdrive
the slight frame of a 4x16 secondary without some significant
ballasting to tame the raw power. Suppose you could run the primaries as two pairs and effectively run them at half in-
put voltage (120 volts, split in series with two primary inputs)
to the MOTs. From what I have heard from others in this
forum, MOTs seem fairly forgiving of ARSG rigors.

David Rieben

----- Original Message ----- From: "David Speck" <Dave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, October 30, 2011 8:25 AM
Subject: [TCML] Old TC restoration advice


Esteemed list,

Halloween is rapidly approaching, and I find myself with no working TC to demo to the Trick or Treaters. Looks like the weather will be good this year, so I can't use rain and snow as an excuse for not having a working coil.

My best prospect for quick repair is a vintage coil that I bought from the late Harry Goldman a few years (~15) back. It has an ~4" x ~16 secondary, a 14" toroid, and a flat 12" pancake primary, and an asynchronous RSG. It ran beautifully until an overenthusiastic assistant let it run a bit too long and burned out one of the unobtanium transformers (open secondary).

It was driven by a series pair of exotic ex-military radar transformers, supplying about 10 kVAC. I'm not sure of the available current. These transformers were apparently self-ballasting, like a NST, and the coil never used a separate ballast.

The transformers are featureless black epoxy cubes, without any identifying designation. These blocks fit loosely about a continuous core made from a single strip of flat transformer steel wound into a square shape. I still can't figure out how they were built.

I tried replacing the bad transformer with a 9 kV 30 mA NST, but the coil runs very rough. Not having a Terry filter in place, I didn't let it run for more than a couple of seconds. I have the parts for a Terry filter, and have the assembly nearly complete.

A thought occurred to me, though, that somewhere I recalled that NSTs generally don't work well with async RSGs. Converting the ASRG to a synchronous RSG on short notice is not likely doable.

So my question is: On short notice, would I be better off finishing the Terry filter, and trying one or two parallel 9 kV NSTs and retuning the primary,

Or,

Should I throw together an 8.8 kV four MOT stack and use an external ballast?

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave


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