Re:Re: unwanted breakout

["Al Hassick" <uncadoc-at-juno-dot-com> (by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>)]

I use a combination of different things that are laying around the house
to hold my foil tape wrapped toroid ball.  Some of them are small tin
cans, a brass springy affair that used to hold a big wax candle that my
wife reluctantly parted with, and the nicest looking ones are the
embossed metal cones that are used on light fixtures and ceiling fans to
hold a glass globe and they come in a multitude of finishes and sizes and
are easily available in the lighting section of your home improvement
store.  Sometimes you will see a real neat deep one for cheap in the
discontinued items bin.  I mount them onto my secondaries with the small
end down, the big area then supports the ball where the glass light
fixture or ceiling junction box would have been.  This also seems to help
to keep unwanted breakout on the secondary at a minimum by raising the
top load higher up off the top of the coil.    The tops of all my coils
have a protruding 1/4-20 bolt attached that makes it easy to affix any
number of different objects to the secondary using varying sizes of flat
washers, fender washers etc.  and a wing nut to facilitate fast change of
different objects.  I use this system at the top of my 3", 5" and 8"
coils.  So there is no reason why you could not rig a secure mount for a
foil covered basketball even atop your 2" coil, use your imagination!  
The simplest junk sometimes makes the best ideas become possible.    Al

On Wed, 06 Sep 2000 13:03:21 -0600 "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
writes:
> Original poster: "sundog" <sundog-at-timeship-dot-net> 
> 
>   Hi all,
> 
>   I've been wanting to see the "single streamer" phenomenon using a
> spherical topload (thanks Dave!), but here's the problem.
> 
>   I'm running a 3" diameter metal sphere on a 2" PVC form.  ~1000 
> turns of
> 32ga wire.  A 9/60 with 12.9nf.  Sync gap -at-240bps.  Once tuned, it 
> runs
> beautiful, tons of streamers, but a goodly chunk of them are coming 
> off of
> the top turn of the secondary. :(  That's robbing a lot of power.   
> Would a
> toroid to help shield the top windings be possible and still get the
> discharge from the sphere?
> 
>   Also, how in the world do you secure a foil-wrapped basketball to 
> the top
> of a secondary?  (don't want to try this on the 2" form, but maybe 
> on the 4"
> coil.
> 
>    
> 												Caio!
> 											Sundog
> 
> 
>