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Re: 1st time
Tesla List wrote:
>
> Original Poster: "Paul R. Eitson" <xyme2-at-earthlink-dot-net>
>
> I have never constructed a coil so bear with me while I ask some perhaps
> odd questions. I am actually a horticulturist so keep your answers on a
> less than technical level. My interest in the coils are more along the
> lines of what they can do rather than how to construct one....
> 1. What type of discharge is emitted at the top of the coil. Is it
> positive of negative or alternating between the two?
It's a radio frequency (RF discharge), which rapidly alternates between
positive and negative potential. Interestingly enough, "growth" of the
streamers seems to occur primarily when the top terminal is at a
positive polarity to ground...
> 2. The secondary is grounded and it is my understanding that "the
> current is at a maximum the voltage is at a minimum while at the top of
> the primary the voltage is at a max. the current is a minimum." By
> current I assume amperage is at a max. at the secondary ground. Is this
> current positive or negative at the secondary ground.?
It's AC (at the resonant frequency of the secondary and topload). The
current maxima and voltage maxima alternate, as the energy that was
transferred to the secondary alternates between being stored in the
electromagnetic field of the secondary (at Imax) and the electrostatic
field at the top of the resonator (at Vmax).
> 3. Transformers are used in the coil. What is the incoming 60 cycle AC
> transformed to?
The transformer simply steps up 50/60 Hz at low voltage (120 or 240
Volts) to high voltage 50/60 Hz power. Typical capacitor-discharge coils
operate at between 10 kV to 25 kV in the Tesla Coil primary circuit.
> 4. How does a magnifying transmitter work.? More importantly what does
> it do?
A magnifying transmitter uses a closely coupled air-core primary and
secondary (the combination is often called a "driver") to directly drive
the base of a 3rd coil (called a resonator or tertiary coil) with
moderately high voltage, high-power RF. A hard connection is made from
the output of the driver (the top of the secondary) to the base of the
tertiary coil in order to transfer the RF energy from the driver. The
driver acts like a regular air-core transformer. The tertiary coil and
it's topload are driven at the proper frequency to maximize it's output
voltage. While there are a number of significanttheoretical and
operational differences between a two-coil Tesla Coil and a 3-coil
magnifier, the end result is basically the same - long streamers.
> 5. What other types of current will work with a coil? In essence has
> anyone experimented with different types of power sources such as
> alternators or generators. ( Tesla once constructed a 300+ pole
> generator.)
A resonator can be excited from other sources of energy, including a
vacuum tube oscillator, a solid state power oscillator, and the energy
can be coupled electromagnetically, capacitively, or directly via a
hard-wired connection. Many coilers have built solid state coils (that
actually are a form of MOSFET or bipolar transistor switching power
supply) where the high frequency output is directly applied to the base
of the resonator. Because of the difficulty in building high frequency
alternators, I'm not aware of any coilers who have built these to drive
their coils, but it certainly can be done.
-- Bert --