Thanks Jim, I'll have to shorten the secondary up a bit from what I had
planned, (19" with around 950 turns on a 3.25 thin walled PVC tube with a
12x3 or 13x4 toroid). But yeah this ones just a baby, if I can get 16" or
18" spark length I'll be impressed, then maybe someday when i have a better
understanding of them I'll build a monster. Thanks again
On Dec 14, 2013 2:20 PM, "Jim Lux" <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 12/14/13 4:55 AM, shane bounds wrote:
>
>> Hi, I'm building my first Tesla coil and was wondering if there is a
>> certain frequency you should try to reach with respect to the power of
>> your
>> transformer?
>>
>
> Not really.
>
> The frequency of the coil is fairly unimportant as long as it's not too
> high or low (for a small coil, 200-400 kHz is typical). It's more
> determined by the physical dimensions of the secondary winding.
>
> What you want to do is size the coil to the size of the power supply: too
> big a coil driven by a small transformer is tough to get to work.
>
> A couple rules of thumb to get you started:
> (and run a tesla coil simulation/design program like JavaTC)
>
> the longest sparks you're likely to get is 1.7*sqrt(power in watts) (in
> inches). As a practical matter, a 12kV 30mA transformer is 360 W will
> give you sparks about 2 feet long.
>
>
>
> You want the overall diameter of the toroidal electrode (top load) to be
> at least 1/2 the height of the secondary coil, and more like equal. (at
> least for small coils). So if your secondary is 2 feet long, a toroid 2
> feet in diameter would work. 1 foot will also work, but will be a bit
> small.
>
> The height of the secondary winding (not necessarily the tube it's wound
> on) should be 4-5 times the diameter of the winding. This is shorter and
> more squat than a lot of pictures you'll see. A 4 inch diameter coil would
> then have windings that are 18 inches long, on a form that's a few inches
> longer (to give you some room to mount it.
>
>
> Figure on winding about 600-800 turns of wire on the secondary.
>
>
>
> I found one formula, but I'm not sure about it,kHz= 3032.5xw^
>
>> -2767 - 96.4, not sure what the ^ is or if the formulas accurate. I've got
>> a 12kv 30 mA nst giving me 360 watts. I'm building it on paper first and
>> trying to get a good understanding of it and at the moment my secondary
>> will have a frequency of 322.6 kHz
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>>
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