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Registered Member #879
Joined: Thu Jul 05 2007, 01:40AM
Location: Christchurch, New Zealand
Posts: 1
Hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone could help me out with a problem I'm having with my new 8 inch Tesla Coil.
Performance is good at 3.5kVA but I get some quite nasty racing sparks near the bottom of the secondary winding. On closer inspection these sparks have caused cracks in the polyurethane coating. I just gave the coil another coat of varnish to repair the damage but I suspect this won't fix the problem. I read that these sparks can be caused by overcoupling or by an overly large topload. The coupling factor with the bottom turn of the secondary level with the primary is 0.147, according to JavaTC. I suspect my topload is too large, perhaps removing the sphere and retuning would help? Or should I try raising the secondary to reduce the coupling?
Attached are some photos of my setup and a text file of JavaTC outputs.
Registered Member #530
Joined: Sat Feb 17 2007, 07:56AM
Location: Victoria BC, Canada
Posts: 178
Racing spark problem can be solved by raising the secondary for sure. I bet that is your problem. I remember ramming 4 kVA into my 4" TC system 2 years ago and I got plenty of racing sparks. Once I raised the secondary it changed the coupling coefficent and the racing sparks went away - I did also use a smaller topload and that changed the coils performance slightly. But I highly doubt that that your topload is too big - it looks just about right.
Registered Member #135
Joined: Sat Feb 11 2006, 12:06AM
Location: Anywhere is fine
Posts: 1735
Like Sulaman said, you're just overcoupled.
I was playing with a parabolic primary on my latest coil setup that had so much coupling on my 4" coil that it caused 5" racing arcs midway up the coil... which was kinda funny.
Try lowering your coupling to .1 and see how that goes.
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Racing spark problem
