And, I might add, the contacts of a distributor cap are quite
"emasculated". They are designed for the for the energy deli-
vered by the ignition coil, which I would think, would only be
a few millijoules per spark. Couldn't see the contacts lasting
long when exposed to the tank circuit discharges of anything
but the smallest of SG driven coil systems (like a bug zapper
or flyback transformer driven one, perhaps). BTW, any auto-
mobile engine today that utilizes a mechanically driven
distributor would fall into the antique / street rod category ;^)
David
From: Jim Lux <jimlux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2014 5:20 AM
Subject: Re: [TCML] car distributor as rotary gap
David Boyle wrote:
I'm designing an srsg with an 7" phenolic disc and 4 tungsten points
spun at 1800rpm by a half horse motor modified to be synchronous. Our
transformer is 10Kv at 60ma. However a member of my team thinks that a
rotary spark gap can be easily made from a distributor cap and rotor
from a car. Is this possible?
you can try.. but I'm not sure it will work very well. A distributor is
designed more like a rotary switch: it doesn't carry any high voltage
except when the rotor is near one of the electrodes. That is, it
doesn't make and break the HV.
If you search the archives, I'll bet someone has tried it, though.
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