Hi Chris,
I am really jealous of those 30 inch sparks! I still can't get past 20 inches. I would be very satisfied with Steve Ward's reported 24 inches out of his 833A VTTC. When I run in CW mode, my maximum current draw is 17 amps at 140 volts for a 2380 watt power consumption. I am not sure why I can't get it to draw more current. My tuning is as good as it can be made.
I am now using a commercial filament transformer, variac, and voltmeter to supply the filament voltage. That reduces my wall power consumption by 600 watts as compared to my re-wound MOT. The power cord runs a lot cooler now! I also added a heat shield between the 833A and the primary circuit doorknob capacitor to prevent any heating of the capacitor through radiation from the 833A since they are only about 2 inches apart.
I found out that the best way to start my VTTC is to start it in CW mode at low power and then transition to pulsed operation. If I start it in pulse mode, occasionally the breakout will not occur until the variac is almost at maximum. Sometimes this will cause a small spark from the secondary hitting my feedback coil guard ring. Since I want to avoid this, by starting the coil at low power in CW mode, I get guaranteed breakout from the top load terminal at about 25% variac setting.
Today I tried a few experiments to be demonstrated to students in the future. I used a 300 watt clear filament light bulb as a plasma globe. Those work great and looks very impressive. I am going to see if I can find an even bigger clear filament light bulb. I also tried the trick where you can light up a small filament bulb from about 3 feet away using an aluminum plate as an antenna. That also worked well. Earlier I made an ion spinner which also worked well.
Steve
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Reeland" <chrisreeland@xxxxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2018 5:58:22 PM
Subject: Re: [TCML] Method for attaining CW in VTTC
Hi Steve,
I don't see any problems with this and you are heatsinked. Maybe others
will chime in on this if not ok.
Just a little update, been busy with other things, but had some time over
the weekend. Finally sqeezed out another 1 inch. Got 30" now. Roller
inductor taken off. Got 3 caps in parallel to get the value I needed.
Managed to find a combination of existing micas that I have, that works
good and I am just sort of able to mount them on the board. Using 3 G2
micas.
First break out on variac now at about 75%. Going to try 2 more tests
tonight.
Later in the week I will give more details. Going to take some measurements
of several things also. So more later...
Chris
Sent from my LG V20
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