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Re: Nathan's Saga Update...



Hi Nathan,

At 09:43 PM 01/08/2000 -0800, you wrote:
>
>
>Terry,and All,
>
>My kudos as well to the USPS. Very impressive delivery.
>The cap told me how well it worked by giving me a little jolt to my 
>outstreched finger when I didn't quite short it well enough... (weren't 
>those resistors supposed to do that? or did I not wait long enough for them 
>to do their job?) It was a tiny zap, anyway.

A 5.6nF cap with 100Meg across it will discharge from 21000 volts to 20
volts in 3.895 seconds.  Unless you are really fast, it was probably static
charges that built up on the dielectrics in your coil or on the cap.  I
wrapped the leads on the resistors so if the solder melts they will stay in
place to avoid the problem Brian had.

>
>I will definitely keep the cap, as it is an improvement from before.  
>Unfortunately, it didn't quite solve all my problems. :-(
>
>I only ran it with the static gap today, just to be nice to my newest 
>investment, ;-) and spark length grew to about 10".  Then I started having 
>transformer problems.  It must just be their time to go, I guess.
>
>I blew two more secondary windings on those darn franceformers.  One of them 
>came undone where the actual last secondary winding came out to meet the 
>wire I attached, and started the left over tar on fire, then burned out 
>completely.
>
>Then I mixed and matched the working secondaries and primaries that I had 
>left from the two identical trannies I rebuilt, and after about 10 sec. the 
>other secondary started smoking.
>
>I still havn't gotten any discharge into the air. Only to my grounded 
>lineman's hook.

The cap should have been a big improvement but this gets clouded by the
transformer problems.

>
>Now I have been running it with my 15/60 that works and is still potted in 
>tar, (this should be resonant with my new cap)  and it runs OK on about 6 RQ 
>gap sections (spaced about 0.03", but if I go more than that, the gaps 
>periodically stop firing.  Performance is definitely increased with each gap 
>I add, but the more gaps, the less consistently the gap fires.

Be SURE you have the safety gaps properly set!!

>
>I have been checking continuity all over the grounds and stuff, and they are 
>all fine. I just added two more turns to the primary to try to get that 
>tuned, but I can't do any real testing until I figure out why the gap stops 
>firing.  I really need a power supply I can count on not to burn itself out.
>
>Hey, you guys with rotaries, I just had something funny happen. I run two 
>extension cords zip tied together to run two seperate 120V lines out to the 
>coil, one is for the trannies, the other for my rotary gap.  This is so I 
>can get the rotary up to speed before energizing the coil.
>
>Since I did not use the rotary today, I did not plug in the cord that goes 
>to that. I still had it connected on the frame of the coil where I have the 
>motor connectors.
>
>I soon found that I am inducing current into the motor windings, because the 
>plug in at the other end of the cord where I was started getting corona 
>discharge and melting itself to the carpet.
>
>So I am pretty sure I'm getting induction to the motor- but does anybody 
>else have experience with this? I havn't noticed any change when I use the 
>rotary (At least when my power supplies were reliable enough to run the 
>coil). Does anybody else have problems with induction of current into their 
>motor windings?

That is really really strange.  I would check the grounding and wiring
really carefully.  You must have had some serious current flow to melt the
carpet.  I doubt just induction from other things would have done that.  I
would try to really figure out what was going on there.

>
>I tried running it with my old toroid, a 3" by 14" foil taped dryer duct.  
>It got no noticable improvement, but the streamer was very stringy, not so 
>crackly and jagged like the other ones.
>
>The difference between the 15/30 and the 15/60 is very noticeable. There is 
>not much of a distance increase, but the 60 gets much hotter, louder, and 
>robust discharge than the 30 does.  When I used the rotary before, though, 
>loudness and brightness of the gap increased dramatically and coil ouput was 
>longer, although still weak.
>
>When I tried the coil on 16 turns instead of 15 the primary, the output got 
>slightly longer, although at that point the spark gap was firing quite 
>sporadically.
>
>I havn't done anything else this evening, but will hope to hear some input 
>soon from you guys out there, so you can help me procrastinate my chemistry 
>lab writeup some more this weekend. ;-)
>
>Thanks,
>Nathan
>
>PS. Are any of you experienced in Tesla Coil Exorcisms? I really think I 
>should get some of these evil demons out of my coil...  They're the best 
>explanation I have for the poor performance now!
>
>Hopefully I will go to my dad's office and scan in some pictures soon so you 
>people can see my actual coil, and maybe that will help you help me. -N

Pictures would be really nice!  Be sure to get the wiring and as much
technical detail as possible!!  There STILL seems to be something wrong.  I
don't think it is a design thing but some wiring issue or something we are
not seeing...

Cheers,

	Terry


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