Jim,If your strike rail is getting hot enough to melt its supports, it must be a continuous loop. That would act as a shorted turn, and be a huge power drain on the coil. A proper strike ring should not heat up at all in normal operation.
There needs to be a small gap in the ring, perhaps 1/2" to 1". If you gap the strike ring, you should see a dramatic improvement in the performance of the coil.
Another issue is that you have the caps installed directly touching each other. You might want to leave a 1/4" gap between them, as the dielectric breakdown value of the insulation of the outer is not especially high. See if any of your failed caps have arced between caps.
Dave On 9/1/2011 10:39 PM, James Hutton wrote:
Hey, so someone is buying my tesla coil off of me for a show he does. My tesla coil is very prone to failure at the moment because I bought the 940c series from cornell dublier.So I have ordered 12 x 942c20p15k (1 row of 10 in series and 2 extras).Hopefully this will make my coil run flawlessly and for long run times. I might get rid of the strike rail above the primary. The streamers never seem to hit it, but it gets so hot that it melts its way through my supports.It's more of a hazard then an aid. But for now I'm going to leave it in case I get rail strikes with the new caps.
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