Hi Gary, Lau, Gary wrote:
This is important!!! One thing to notice is that every time that there are several smaller bangs occurring in quick succession, this ALWAYS happens following a point where the cap voltage charges almost to Vgap, but doesn't quite make it, then goes back through zero and soars to Vgap on the other side of zero. I'd bet a Maxwell that the NST is cranking out a lot more current from the previously unspent bang, and with the gap still hot from the initial full-voltage bang, the breakdown voltage is diminished. I definitely need to repeat this while also scoping the charging current.
Yes, this is important! It seems looking at the point "without" the quick succession, that the cap was rid of most of it's energy by the time it crossed zero, but in the instances it fired in quick succession, it went far past zero crossing. Look at the 1st occurrence of this on the left. The cap charges and then fires a little above Vgap, arcs, crosses zero to about -11kV, back up and then the low voltage arcs occur. Considering the gap, those low voltage arcs may have been allowed to conduct simply due to the ion level between the electrodes considering that quick time range. But for this to occur, the cap must still retain a decent charge. The ion cloud between the gaps may be allowing the rebirth of lower voltage arcs. To do that, the cap still had energy. But what I see concerning is that there is a large time frame over which these low voltage arcs occurred. This doesn't show a "super charge" occurring from the transformer, but rather a gap that for a period of time had a very low arc voltage.
This does not look like a situation where the transformer caused it. It looks more like a higher conductive region of gas between electrodes during the period simply due to the voltages at which break down occurred. Wouldn't you agree?
Bart _______________________________________________ Tesla mailing list Tesla@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.pupman.com/mailman/listinfo/tesla