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Jim,
I have a contrarian friend who built a TC with a square primary and
secondary, just to prove that it could be done. It does work, in a
manner of speaking, but tends to arc from corners at the top of the
secondary. I would say that the performance is less than what I would
expect from the effort involved.
I'd guess that other shapes could be constructed, but I believe that
concentric cylindrical primaries and secondaries are going to give the
greatest spark length and intensity for a specific power input. The
object of a TC is to couple energy from the primary into the secondary
with maximum efficiency. Any other geometries will be less efficient
than concentric cylindrical windings.
A few years ago, someone on the list discussed a system that used three
smaller diameter secondaries wired in parallel in a triangular
arrangement surrounded by a circular primary. It reputedly had
reasonable performance but no dramatic advantages over a single
secondary of conventional diameter were described.
Dave
On 11/27/2016 8:32 PM, jj@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
I have a question for the list. Does a Tesla coil have to be round?
Can it be elongated or any other shape, as long as their are no sharp
corners, ie. 2 feet wide, 4 feet long and 2 feet high, or "S"shaped
or, or shaped like a pyramid as long as all the corners are rounded