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On 5/8/15 6:16 AM, Kerry Soileau wrote:
Hey guys. I got my parts in yesterday. 5 days early! Spent 6 hours
winding a 3"x 22" coil on a microwave turn table motor.....never
again lol.
you say that now, but pretty soon, you'll be winding a 4", and then a
8"... step away now while there's still time... (oh, it's too late<grin>)
Anyway my question is, how far should my safety gap be for
my MMC bank. Thanks in advance.
I'm assuming you're running a neon sign transformer(NST)..
I set my gap so that it just doesn't fire when just the transformer is
hooked up. If you've got a variac, you can probably run the primary
voltage up a bit when setting the gap. 120V is almost certainly safe,
130 is pushing it. NSTs are a "cost conscious" design and don't have a
lot of reserve capacity or designmargin.
To a certain extent, the safety gap is like the "brave screw" on a
turbocharger boost controller. If you've got a box full of spare
transformers, you can be a bit more brave.
But realistically, if you've got a box full of transformers, the way to
get bigger sparks is to parallel transformers and run more current,
keeping the voltage conservative.