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Re: Beating a Dead Horse - Neons




Inductive or noninductive resistor?
Barry

 ----------
|From: "tesla-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com"-at-PMDF-at-PAXMB1
|To: Benson Barry; "Tesla-list-subscribers-at-poodle.pupman-dot-com"-at-PMDF-at-PAXMB1
|Subject: Re: Beating a Dead Horse - Neons
|Date: Tuesday, November 05, 1996 7:39AM
|
|<<File Attachment: 00000000.TXT>>
|From dwt-at-efn-dot-orgMon Nov  4 22:03:56 1996
|Date: Mon, 04 Nov 1996 18:18:54 +0000
|From: David Trimmell <dwt-at-efn-dot-org>
|To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
|Subject: Re: Beating a Dead Horse - Neons
|
|You wrote:
|
|> I think I'm more confused now than I ever was about protecting my
|> neon transformers. It's a big deal to me because I only have 5 left
|> and don't want to fry them. I've seen a certain person in Fort Worth
|> go through many of them (30 over the course of two years), sometimes 2-3 
at
|a time ;-)
|> I'm sure I didn't understand all the Spice simulations, but I'm
|> more interested in what people have actually done anyways. I'd hate to
|> fry a neon based on theory, I simply can't afford the loss (i.e. no
|> money). So heres the deal:
|> If you have ever run a Tesla Coil with neons then please tell me
|> exactly what you used to protect it, with as much detail as
|> possible. Saying,"two chokes and one bypass cap", doesn't help much.
|> Here's my setup, which got two neons fried:
|>
|> I had a safety gap which fired intermitently to ground (a bolt
|> attached to each leg of the neon output with a center bolt to ground,
|>   ----   |  ----   ). After that came a 3 inch toroid choke on each
|> leg with about 10 inches of 18 gauge wire on each. (not enough I'm told).
|For a safety cap I
|> had 5 small doorknob caps which screwed together and were attached across
|the
|> neon outputs (series). Each one says,"2500 MMFD - 5KVAC" (I'm really not
|sure what
|> MMFD means. I'm used to mfd and pf. Don't laugh, my major is psychology 
not
|> electronics ;-)
|>
|> So there you have it. A recipe for burning up a neon! Anyone have a
|> better recipe?
|
|I have been running a resonator off of a 15 kV-at-120mA neon with many
|hours of run time (~3-5 hours total run time) using the following setup;
|My RF filter is setup in the following maner: (Per legg) off of the HV
|leed is connected a 1.5 Kohm 50 Watt resitor (to dampen the resonance
|that may occure between the secondary of the neon and the filter Cap), a
|total of 1.5 nanoFarad doornobs to RF ground and finnaly two chokes for
|a total of ~3.5 mH (calculated). Now this setup has worked well for me
|although a bit lossy with the resisters. I get about 48-55 inch
|streamers off of a 4.5 inch coil with a heavily loaded terminal.
|Exeriment yourself, but the more inductance the better and the
|resistance seams to make the difference for me. Yes, I have lost many
|neons too. Look for the 120 mA neon as they are a bit stronger. I have
|done away with the safety gap, but that is a matter of opinion. By the
|way MMFD is the same as Pico Farad (micro micro farad). Hope this helps.
|
|David Trimmell <dwt-at-efn-dot-org>
|