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Re: My Primary Coil disaster



Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Patrick Bloofon by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <transactoid-at-home-dot-com>
> 
> Okay, this whole tesla coil thing has not been going my way. First, the wire
> breaks while winding the secondary (perhaps you've seen my post...). Now, my
> primary coil is all but an expensive hunk of copper.
> 
> I cut out and drilled 5 really nice offsets. I mounted them onto a
surface, and
> began feeding 1/4" copper tube through it, starting from the outside.  After
> about 5 loops, the tubing was so bent, twisted, and demented out of shape I
> couldn't go any further.  Loops were overlapping and the tube was flexed in
> multiple planes (ie, bent side to side as well as up and down...). I'll
try to
> get some pictures up so you can see this mess.
> 
> What I'd like to know is:
> 
> -Are there any good ways to re-bend or straigten the copper tubing when it is
> in such a state? (ie, is this thing salvagable)
> 
> -Seeing as my method of winding failed miserably, I'm guessing it's not how
> others do it. What is the "proper" way to wind it?
> 
> PS. This copper tube is extremely expensive where I live. The cheapest I
found
> was $30 for 50 feet.  Home Depot doesn't even carry it around here.
> 
> Thanks,
> "A very frustrated coiler",
> Patrick
> 
	I suspect there is no way to salvage the tubing.  I have successfully
straightened out badly screwed up #8 wire by first annealing it with an
acetylene torch (very carefully applied, of course) followed by cleaning
and then stretching it enough to deform the wire a bit.  This renders it
very straight and not too hard to use, provided you are very careful
with the stretching.  It might be possible to do the same thing with
tubing, although 50 feet of tubing sounds like too much to try to mess
with.  I suspect your best approach is to take your losses, lick your
wounds, and get some more tubing.

	Tubing as purchased is nice and soft and pretty easy to work with. 
I've had good luck wrapping the coil around something of appropriate
diameter to make a pre-formed coil, and then carefully THREADING it
through the holes in the pre-drilled supports.  I made an 18" diameter
10 turn primary this way many years ago, although I used the much
cheaper 3/8" aluminum tubing.  It is a plenty good conductor for TC use.

Ed