paralleling electrodes will NEVER work, it is absolutely impossible. Because
always only one electrode is firing. The only way it works is putting
electrodes in series.
Regards,
Stefan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Yurtle Turtle via Tesla" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 12:00 PM
Subject: Re: [TCML] Number of stationary electrodes & gap spacing in RSG
I never thought about running mine in parallel. I used to run a two gap RSG
with the circular shorting bar, but now run with four gaps, one stationary
gap on either side of the flying electrodes, with a shorting bar across the
back two stationaries. That's four gaps that have to line up all in series,
and it's never been a problem, as far as I can hear, or firing my static
emergency gap. I've played with varying the distances, and even tried a
static vacuum gap in series with that. Unfortunately, I never documented
which seemed to work better. I may try the parallel setup, as the reason I
added a series gap was to try and minimize the "trailing" sparks.
________________________________
From: Phil <pip@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: 'Tesla Coil Mailing List' <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2014 5:08 PM
Subject: Re: [TCML] Number of stationary electrodes & gap spacing in RSG
That's interesting David. Funnily enough I was talking with the other UK
coiler I run with, over that very issue the other day - one pair or two
pairs of stationary gaps.
Without any empirical knowledge of two parallel pairs (4 electrodes) I
felt that if the stationary gaps were in parallel (with the aim of sharing
the current / heat burden) then maybe the stationeries would run cooler.
I reasoned that only one pair will ever fire at one time, as the gaps
would need the machining tolerances of NASA, to both coincide together for
a discharge that is measured in mere millionths of a second. So assuming
the workload evens out between them, they would each do half the work.
(If the gaps were in series for quenching assistance with a conductive
band around the rotor then obviously it's a different matter - tried that
once, but had other issues.)
If my parallel thinking was correct the flying electrodes would still only
be seeing the same amount of firings though, be it with one stationary
pair or the other pair.
Your experiences now make me think my reasoning is wrong though, as only
both pairs of stationeries firing together could cause the overheating, by
the reasoning you mention - they are firing twice as much.
The decreased performance of yours could of course have been down to
quenching issues from the (then) overheated electrodes?
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