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Registered Member #55389
Joined: Mon Jul 06 2015, 12:38AM
Location: Grand Terrace, CA
Posts: 29
I am getting my commercial HV caps today. My JavaTC spec says the caps will see 15kV, and to use caps rated for 35kV. I am thinking a 20 or 30kV gap made from paper clips would be good to protect them. What is the proper spacing for the fairly sharp edges of a paper clip for a gap? I know 50kV/in is a good rule of thumb, but not sure about sharper objects.
This this a conventional spark gap coil? If you're using a 15kV NST the peak voltage is sqrt2*15kV. In any case, I think it's probably a better idea to use something more robust than paper clips which after a few firings will probably melt. A cheap solution is to simply use brass bolts as the electrodes and round end-caps as the spark electrode.
This will also allow easy fine adjustment of the gap distance. For the actual spark gap you'd want something that quenches better, such as one made from an array of parallel copper pipes. To adjust the safety gap, I usually slowly open up the gap until it no longer sparks across when connected to the NST, and then go back just a little bit. The actual spark gap can be set to have a total breakdown voltage slightly less than the safety gap.
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Paper Clip Safety Spark Gap?
