Hi Dave,
The Kinraide Coil only ran at about 200 watts. The gap functions without the jug of water, but becomes unsteady if run for extended periods...must remember in the early days some X-Rays could have taken 5 minutes or more. (With other apparatus it could have been 15 or 20, which is why the K Coil was popular...well, that and it was not expensive comparatively to induction coils).
Original versions of the gap had water cooling pipes running to both plates, but to simplify things for ease of manufacture just a jug of water was used.
The original space where these machines were manufactured was a 8 x 10 foot room, later a 10 x 10 foot room.
In the later Strong gap two cans of water with silver spark gap contacts were used. The biggest problem Kinraide faced was to get copper plates 6" diameter that were not warped. He milled them flat (with a horizontal milling machine) but even still to get two disks perfectly flat and a nice finish on copper is not easy. On the original the disks they were scraped using a metal file - you can see the file marks to try and make them flat. Later on he developed a milling machine cutter that had an oiled-brush to remove chips and prevent the milled particles from rewelding themselves along the plate creating an irregular surface. When I repaired the AC coil I needed to make the copper disks and faced similar issues. I waterjet cut circles and scraped them with a bastard file to achieve a smooth surface. I tried my best anyhow...
You can see pics here:
http://www.electrotherapymuseum.com/2011/Kinraide_Coil_Restoration/SparkGap/index.htm
Before I saw an original gap in 2008 I made some guesstimates and created two for myself and Frank Jones. I wasn't too far off...
http://www.electrotherapymuseum.com/2008/ElectricalSparkGap/index.htm
6061 Aluminum works like crap though. I later faced them with copper, which is in the HD video. It works better, but if the planes aren't parallel they arc and fizzle.
Interesting that a few originals were made with aluminum which was really expensive then. Harvard has a Kinraide Coil with an aluminum gap...or at least they did at one time.
http://dssmhi1.fas.harvard.edu/eMuseumMedia/eMuseumpostagestamps/F007157_pro.jpghttp://dssmhi1.fas.harvard.edu/eMuseumMedia/eMuseumFull/A001693/http://dssmhi1.fas.harvard.edu/eMuseumMedia/eMuseumFull/F007157_pro/
Funny that Kinraide's most famous machines, the Kinraide and Jackson coils had such odd specs. One ran from a 900V transformer and the other a 30kVAC transformer. Extreme tank circuits and extremely interesting sparks.
Jeff
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2014 12:48:40 -0500
Subject: Re: [TCML] Rescuing and loosing 2 Kinraide Coils and 16-plate Static Machine...
From: tcbuilder@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: jeff_behary@xxxxxxxxxxx
Hi Jeff,
Casimir was a respectable scientist who predicted the resonance of space, which generates photons. His theory was proved by Steven Lamoreaux, who works at Los Alamos Labs. In 2010, CERN conclusively proved that the photons generated by the Casimir effect are indeed real photons, and not virtual photons, as had been widely guessed prior to 2010.
When Steven Lamoreaux conducted his experiment, he found that a flat disk and hemisphere produced the best results. However, I believe the hemisphere was inverted in his experiment. The closeness of the gap between the plate and hemisphere is an essential characteristic of the Casimir effect.
I have since watched your video on the construction of the Kinraide Coil. Although there is water in the copper hemisphere, I do not believe it is the cooling effect that makes it so effective. Water also has unique electrical properties and the whole apparatus would seem to work as a unit. Have you tried running the coil with just the two parallel plates and a stream of air over the top plate? Did it function the same? it is difficult for me to believe that heat could transfer efficiently through the copper (which is held to the plate only by gravity) and into the water to keep up with the heat of the arc, unless heat wasn't an issue in the first place. Also, the large surface area and narrowness of the gap does not allow for air flow, which is what is really necessary to quench a gap. If there were ionized air in the gap, regardless of its temperature, it would cause arcing.
From my experience and understanding of the physics, I say it is the geometry of the gap that better contains the electric dynamics, and not temperature-based quenching.
Dave
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