Re: MOT supply ballasting

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "J. B. Weazle McCreath by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <weazle-at-hurontel.on.ca>


At 05:15 PM 29/06/03 -0600, you wrote:
 >Original poster: "Matt Whitman by way of Terry Fritz
<teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <teslacoiler-at-hotmail-dot-com>
 >
 >Hello all. A while back there was some talk about capacitively ballasting
 >mot supplies. I was wondering if anyone has had any success with this and
 >how do you wire it up?
 >
 >Matt Whitman
 >teslacoiler-at-hotmail-dot-com
 >http://web.a-znet-dot-com/~teslacoiler/index.html
 >KC2IEV
 >

Hi Matt, Coilers,

I've had some experience with capacitive ballasting just recently.
One of my neighbours is a teacher and wanted to bring several of
his science classes out to see my coil.  I wanted to show them a
Jacob's Ladder prior to firing the coil so I hooked together four
MOTs and four MOCs and connected them to a couple of three foot
lengths of copper water pipe.  The flaming arc was insane, but
the 15 amp breaker held in there and nothing overheated either.

The only thing to watch is that the caps are all the same value
and that you put some bleeder resistors across them to discharge
any residual charge after shutdown.  They supposedly have built
in resistors, but I feel safer having added external ones too.
Give it a shot, I think you will be surprised at the results.

73, Weazle, VE3EAR/VE3WZL

Details of my "Hyperbaric Gap" and Tesla coil are at:
http://www.hurontel.on.ca/~weazle