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Re: Argon Gap - First Light....

Hi Terry,

> Original Poster: Terry Fritz <terryf-at-verinet-dot-com>
> 
> Hi All,
>     I finally hooked up my argon gap to my coil tonight with the following
> results:
> 
> 1.  The gaps fired at a lower voltage than I expected.  All the gaps fired
> at about 9 to 10 kV.  I believe this is due to the design of the gap array.
>  I failed to realize that at these high voltages, the capacitance from the
> different levels of gaps would be significant.  There are rows of gaps
> separated by 1/4 inch glass plates.  I now calculate the capacitance from a
> lower to upper gap pipe at about 6.3pF.  At 10kV those parasitic caps would
> store around 300mJ each.  Probably not a terrible problem alone but it
> caused the next problem.
> 
> 2.  Micro arcing.  In order the charge all the pipe capacitances up, tiny
> micro arcs occur.  These are tiny low power arcs that jump between the gaps
> and serve to charge the parasitic capacitances.  Unfortunately these arcs
> make the gap's firing voltage lower than expected and make the firing
> voltage somewhat unstable. 
> 
> 3.  The powerful fan easily cools the 5 inch pipe sections.  The chamber
> grows somewhat warm but most of the heat is from the 85 watt fan.  I am
> confident that the chamber can run high powers without overheating.  The
> glass sides dissipate the heat to the outside very well.
> 
> 4.  The argon protects the gaps from burning and charring as expected.  The
> gap surfaces get a dull but clean copper coating.
> 
> 5.  The quench was excellent!!  I moved my coil down to the lowest position
> (k=0.20) and had a field probe monitoring the coil.  At no time did I see
> anything other than first notch quenching!  This coil has never operated
> with K high than 0.17 without quench failure.  This is especially
> significant since breakout could be prevented with the lower firing
> voltages.  There are three things that may have contributed to this:
>     a.  The argon gas.
>     b.  The air flow through the gaps.
>     c.  The micro arcing.

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How does the coil perform as compared to other settings/gaps?

Thanks,
Malcolm
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