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Ion Wheels



Hi Everyone,  

The other day I tried to make an ion wheel to go on my solid state Tesla
coil- I soldered 2 solid wires to a small piece of square metal and I
arranged the wires in the same form as the arms on a garden water sprinkler
i.e
																																											 llll
																																													l
																																													l
																																											lllllll
																																											lllllll
																																													l
																																													l
																																													llll

I pinpunched the middle of the metal square and suspended the ion wheel on a
needle which I then taped to the doorknob terminal on the coil. 

When I started up the coil the ion wheel did not move as it had corona coming
out of both sides of the wires on each side (i.e not only did corona come out
of the sharp metal end point of the wire but it also came out of the fairly
gentle wire bend opposite the wire point). I guess I'll have to make the
wires longer and make the bend even more gentle. Why should corona come out
here? The coil resonates at 120 kHz - is 120kHz high enough in frequency that
a fairly gentle bend in a wire is high enough in inductance that it is easier
for the HV to jump straight out of the wire like lightning will jump from a
sharp turn in a lightning rod ground wire?

I have made ion wheels before using HV DC. They've rotated at quite high
speeds. I'm not sure how well it will work on AC as I guess with the changing
polarity of the electricity that any ion wind will be repelled and then
attracted back towards the discharge terminal again. Has anyone out there
successfully made an ion wheel for a Tesla coil?

Best Regards,
Mark

-- Mark
       _/_/_/   _/_/_/_/       Mark Conway
      _/    _/    _/          Deep Thought BBS, Auckland, New Zealand
     _/    _/    _/          A FirstClass(tm) Macintosh GUI BBS
    _/_/_/      _/          Internet: mconway-at-deepthnk.kiwi.gen.nz