Matt, when building a Tesla coil, yes, you can make sparks with multiple
turn primaries. Tesla's research, however, showed that the best resonators
had just a single turn primary of a conductor, and that the conductor
diameter of the secondary should be smaller than the conductor diameter of
the primary.
Doug's bipolar coil has two adjustable secondaries, making his setup ideal
for a single turn primary. All he needs to do to get maximum coupling is to
build a single turn primary and then experiment with the position of the
secondaries until he get's maximum resonance.
As Tesla reasoned, high voltage oscillators are Helmholtz resonators.
Therefore the same physics that make a flute resonate are the same physics
that make a Tesla coil resonate. The flutist will not become a better
flutist by having extra pairs of lips, and neither does a Tesla coil become
a better resonator by having extra primary turns. To make the Tesla coil
work optimally, the primary should always be one turn of a heavy conductor,
and the secondary should be built accordingly. If you want to tune the
primary, use adjustable capacitance and adjustable input power. If you want
to tune the secondary, adjust the primary/secondary coupling, the distance
of the topload from the secondary, and the surface area of the topload. If
there is coupling between the topload and ground, you could also adjust the
resistance of the ground connection.
David Thomson
On Sun, Feb 17, 2019 at 3:42 PM derstrom8--- via Tesla <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Hi Doug,
>
> Is there any way for you to reduce your tank capacitance so that you can
> use more turns on your primary? I'm no expert myself but I'm thinking more
> primary turns and slightly less tank capacitance is better than very few
> primary turns and a large tank capacitance. Perhaps someone else could
> chime in here with better qualifications?
>
> Regards,
> Matt Lewis, Fairlee VT
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Douglas Johnson <doug379306@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: Tesla Coil Mailing List <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Sun, Feb 17, 2019 4:24 pm
> Subject: Re: [TCML] Coupling
>
> Hi Gary, Thank you, You can probably tell from most of my posts that I am
> not very technical concerning this stuff, but I have an insatiable appetite
> to learn. That said, I am continuing to try to improve the performance of
> this little coil, since the video I have improved tuning until l now I am
> getting " breakouts" from both ends. When I get the coil tuned to what I
> think is optimum, which may include working to improve the primary. {I
> think I have too many turns on it because I am down to using only about
> three}, I will do another video, so any requests or instruction on what to
> look for would be helpful.
> Doug
> _______________________________________________
> Tesla mailing list
> Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> https://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla
>
_______________________________________________
Tesla mailing list
Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla