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On 1/21/20 9:00 AM, Antonio Queiroz wrote:
Em 19/01/2020 19:53, Jake Bissen via Tesla escreveu:
Hello Tesla Board,
My name is Jake Bissen I do a show in Milwaukee utilizing Tesla coils
along side Sam Catania who owns 4 solid state coils.
I'm unique and reckless in that my Faraday suit is a suit of medieval
plate armor (like a jousting knight). Right off the bat I do not
recommend this to ANYONE, Don't try it at home. I have only been
<snip>
Thank you,Jake Bissen
Aluminum really has problems with the highly insulating surface oxide
layer. Even if screws are used to fix connection wires after removing
most of the oxidation the connections tend to become loose because
aluminum flows under pressure. Pressure washers must be used. Just
flexible wires fixed with tape will make poor connections. Connections
using plugs or something allowing quick connection and firm contact
would be better, if you want to save the time that connections with
screws would take.
You could have made an armor suit made of brass, for example, that is
not much more difficult to work than aluminum and far easier than steel.
No problems with connections with brass, and a "golden suit" would look
more impressive.
Antonio Carlos M. de Queiroz
I was thinking about that - brass (or copper) would work, but would
potentially be a lot heavier. Steel is actually pretty good, but heavy,
and it's easy to make "good enough" contacts, but you'd have the rusting
problem, and Jake can't just throw his armor at his squire and say "have
it all polished up by tomorrow". Stainless steel would work, but is
also heavy.
The commercial shark suits that folks use as shielding chain mail are
stainless steel.
This is an interesting challenge - aluminum is nice - easy to form,
always clean, light weight. I suspect that if you do make wire
connections with, say, screws, eventually they'll get loose as Antonio
describes. And then you might not get directly shocked, but you might
get burned by the sparks jumping the gap, and that would probably be
more painful than the RF spark (which are notorious for doing damage but
not hurting a lot - see the archives)
Some sort of compression bonding technique that can't loosen is going to
be the key - I'm thinking that some sort of rivet that swages the wire
into the aluminum with some residual tension to keep it from loosening.
Maybe the choices of aluminum alloy might help.