On 8/19/12 5:13 AM, Jim wrote:
Hello Jim, Quite interesting. It sounds like you have been doing this for a while (70's). Neat also is how someone was tinkering with this about a hundred years ago. I am looking for a design that will play a large spectrum of notes. There is a used electrical supply house nearby that sells variable frequency drives which I can use as an inverter to get my DC from. My coil size is 540-watts, 9,000-volts, about 48" tall, with about a 4" by 20.5" toroid producing 30" max arcs.
Here's an interesting idea..some of those VFDs have easily programmable frequency (using an analog input). You could try driving your existing coil (static spark gap?) with a VFD, and change the "line frequency". It won't work over a huge range (go low and your transformer won't have enough iron in the core, go high, and losses increase), but you might be able to get an octave out of it.
Set the VFD up for 120V output (to start with) and see how it works as you change the output frequency into your TC. Most VFDs have a way to set a curve for voltage vs frequency, which might make up for some of the efficiency variations.
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