Looks pretty good to me. There is nothing wrong with wood as long as it is used in the proper places such as for structural elements as you have done. Just don't use it where HV will come into contact with it because it is a lousy insulator. Use plastics, ceramics, and other types of insulators and standoffs for the HV elements. As a matter of fact, wood can look as good as anything if finished properly. My pole pig powered coil uses wood for the structural parts such as decks and supports.
For the tank circuit, my coil uses 3/8" copper tubing for everything: primary and connections. There is no "wire", so to speak. With my capacitors and pole transformer, JAVATC predicts that my tank circuit puts out about 450 amps for each discharge (240 bps). Due to the skin effect and high peak current I wanted to minimize my primary circuit losses, hence the 3/8" tubing for everything. Since your coil is NST powered, you don't have to go to that extreme. Just use some decent sized wire, say 12 AWG or larger. Smaller wire will also work, you will just have more losses although it may be hard to detect the difference. You will experience more heating with smaller wire. Just remember, due to the skin effect, the primary circuit current is only flowing in the outer millimeter or less of the wire. This is why thicker wire is more desirable even though the vast majority of the wire is not being used. This is also why copper tubing is best if you can make use of it.
For HV wiring in the primary circuit connections, you can use use regular wire such as THHN slipped inside of clear vinyl tubing. The vinyl tubing provides a lot of insulation. You can look up the insulation standoff voltage for various thicknesses. Even with the tubing, I would still not let any of the HV wire come into contact with anything just as a precaution. Use standoffs made of insulating material such as ceramic, G10, etc. You can dispense with the clear plastic tubing if you can maintain adequate separation between the HV wiring. The vinyl tubing does provide some additional protection against corona losses.
For the wiring from the NST to the primary circuit, you can use very small wire because the current is so low and the skin effect is negligible at 60 Hz. My pole transformer powered coil uses Belden HV test lead which is only 22 AWG. I can do this because I am only pulling about 0.3 amps from the transformer. Since Belden HV test lead is expensive, you can just use regular wire if you take certain precautions. You can either suspend the regular wire away from the ground on standoffs or slip it inside some vinyl tubing for HV insulation. As before, the vinyl tubing will also supply additional protection against corona loss for regular wire.
Here is what I did for my HV leads from the transformer to the primary circuit. As I stated earlier, I use 22 AWG Belden HV test lead rated at 10 KVAC. Since this is below the 14.4 KV that my transformer puts out, I also slipped the test lead HV wire inside 1/2" vinyl tubing. These 2 combined gives me adequate insulation. I then enclosed the HV leads and vinyl tubing within a sheath of copper braid. I then ground the copper braid to earth. The copper braid serves 2 purposes. It absorbs any streamer strikes which may hit the leads and shunts them to ground. It also provides a more even charge distribution along the HV leads. So with this 3-part HV lead (Belden test lead, vinyl tubing, copper braid), I am confident to just let my HV leads just lie on the ground outdoors. This is probably a little extreme and you don't really have to do this for your NST coil.
For primary circuit connections, I use mechanical connectors. I use a combination of store-bought connectors and custom-made connectors that I made myself.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Kunkel" <dankunkel@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 10:34:35 AM
Subject: [TCML] General Construction Advice
I am getting my second coil online after a 20 year hiatus and would like to
do a decent job with the construction and build quality. I don't have the
money or machine shop or 3D printer to make a beautiful/professional/museum
quality display piece...but I don't want this thing to look like some
amateur junk yard project either!
So consider a moderately powered coil (15kv @60-120mA NST). Right now my
chassis is made of wood with PVC legs to separate the levels. The primary
coil support is a plastic cutting board. I'd like to keep the amount of
metal in the chassis to a minimum, but it looks like I will be having to
use screws and wood for general stand-offs, wire strain relief, and
support. The primary coil and all wiring is 1/4" copper tubing.
Here is a pic of current progress...my son helped me attach the casters!
https://imgur.com/jL2ngVc
Questions:
What do you guys like to do for tank circuit wiring (including connecting
the NST to the tank)?
What kind of wire/tubing?
What kind of insulation?
What kind of electrical/mechanical connections (solder, nut&bolt)?
What kind of insulator and stand-offs do you use?
Thanks,
~Dan
Kansas City area
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