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Re: Tesla Coil Operation - was "Harmonics"
Scott, All -
My understanding of a Tesla coil.
The Tesla coil operation has no mechanical or other electrical analogy.
The closest type of operation would be an oscillator that produces a
dampened RF sine wave in "surges" and transfers the energy from a primary to
secondary coil with no "inductance losses" creating an ultra high voltage.
However, it does use resonant electric circuits which cause losses. No other
electrical apparatus can produce ultra high voltages with large amounts of
energy. This leaves out tube, solid state, ignition, all pulse type
circuits, Van DeGraaff generators, Linear Accelerators, Marx generators, etc.
John Couture
--------------------------------
At 07:54 AM 1/14/99 -0700, you wrote:
>Original Poster: Scott Stephens <Scott2-at-mediaone-dot-net>
>
>At 02:03 AM 1/14/99 -0700, you wrote:
>
>>SNIP
>>
>>.... this is akin to pushing a swing every time it rocks back.
>>
>>SNIP
>>
>>A Tesla coil should be viewed more like a
>>lightly coupled transformer.
>...
>>I think a better picture of a spark gap driven Tesla coil would be a hammer
>>and a bell. Your hammer is the primary circuit and the bell is your
secondary
>>coil.
>
>I see it this way:
>
>The energy in the primary cap is the hammer blow. It causes the primary
>resonant circuit to ring, like a bell. The secondary is resonant too, and
>loosely coupled to the primary resonant circuit by the magnetic field.
>
>The primary causes the secondary to ring; energy is swaped back and forth
>between the ringing, resonant coils. The rate energy is exchanged depends on
>the degree of coupling and tuning.