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Re: My problems...*lol*



At 10:14 PM 6/30/99 -0600, Tesla List wrote:
>Original Poster: Erthwin-at-aol-dot-com 

<snippage>

>well, and the toroid...well it doesn't even exist yet. The spark gap has 
>suffered many problems....the first was that I built it out of wood and bolts 
>(don't ask why, I haven't the slightest idea), needless to say it grounded 
>out long before it ever sparked, that problem was quickly fixed only to be 
>replaced with another>>> my lack of an air source was allowing a continuous 
>spark. I fixed that problem just yesterday by building RQ's air blast gap but 
>now my spark gap has yet another problem! As I turn up the air pressure to 
>quench the gap the spark goes out at around 20-30 psi but then it doesn't 
>bridge the gap again until I lower the psi, after working with it for about 
>ten mins or so I eventually got it to run, but it only sparks about 3 times a 
>minute, I'm hoping that a larger capacitor will fix this problem but I'll 

How wide is your gap with this setup? It shouldn't be wide at all. I
don't think a cap will fix this problem.  

You might try the cylindrical RQ gap. I used 12 hard copper pipes to get
11 gaps at .030 all in a 6" PVC form about 10" in length. The pipes
were 4" in length and just over 1" diameter. I drilled about 6 holes
into the PVC between each gap, plugged up the bottom of the PVC
with a disk, mounted a muffin fan on top and the fan sucks in the air
between each gap through the holes. Works pretty good when I hook it
up to the NST; the sparks dance with the airflow.

If you elect to build this gap, make sure you do the electrodes one at a time,
otherwise it will be off. The advantage in building this type of gap is you set
it once initially while you're building it, then you apply epoxy to the
back side of the electrodes, re-gap and tighten the brass screws in, it's set
for good and won't come loose. You'll have to be careful with this type of
gap because of all the exposed brass screw terminals. I had to thread the
wire for the muffin fan through a thick rubber hose and then use electrical
wire ties to keep the wire assembly to the fan as far away as possible from
any of the HV terminals. I was a little hasty in not doing this soon enough
and got a slight shock when a HV terminal arced through the hose when
it was too close to a terminal.

I'm planning on building my safety gap with three terminals - one on each
end and one in the middle. The one in the middle goes to the RF ground.
The safety gap should be adjusted wider then the normal spark gap, just
until it won't arc.

>have to wait and see. Then comes my secondary coil, I planned on making it 4" 
>diameter by 16" tall so that's the form size I used but then all I could find 
>was 18awg wire (this was before I knew about magnet wire so I was getting my 
>wire from Lowes) so I could only fit 400 turns on my secondary, I know this 
>is way too small but I was kind of hoping that if I fixed all of the other 
>problems I would get at least some results and then I could go back and fix 
>the secondary coil some other time. Oh well, I guess trial and error is what 
>TC building is all about...I'll keep pluggin along until I get it right.

One of the advantages in looking at other coilers web pages is learning from
their experiences and seeing how to do things in a better way and hopefully
learning to avoid common design pitfalls. 

Don





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"Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God" - Thomas Jefferson