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Registered Member #1412
Joined: Thu Mar 27 2008, 04:07PM
Location: Taipei Taiwan
Posts: 278
The spark length of my SSTCs and DRSSTCs is always much shorter than those on Youtube. My friend said that humidity might be the problem. Is this possible? The humidity here is around 70~90%.
Registered Member #1403
Joined: Tue Mar 18 2008, 06:05PM
Location: Denmark, Odense C
Posts: 1968
You are asking a pretty wide question here, it is kind of like why is my bike with squared wheels not as fast down the mountain as the tour de france riders?
Lets take a look at your coils:
In almost all your threads you show that you do not know how to optimize the different Tesla coil topologies, you mix a few things together and plug things out or plug them in however you just feel to experiment or from lack of components.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with experimenting or learning along the way, just do not expect to match the Tesla coils you find on youtube with something that is made from less optimal components.
You use alligator clips, long thin wires, uneven coils hold by electrical tape, the amount of extra inductance can ruin your signals no matter how good your board layout is.
Toploads made from aluminized plastic ducting or very uneven aluminium foil with lots of bumps, there will be a lot of losses in corona discharge all over the sphere you can not see.
In your first DRSSTC you seem to use iron powder toroid that will saturate at the frequencies in a Tesla coil, they are no good for GDT or CT use.
You have wires in the primary and secondary circuit that is just twisted together.
Are you sure your tank capacitors are legit? I have not been able to find any 940C80P1 capacitor from Cornell Dubilier, it could be a counterfeit part with a much worse performance.
Your OneTesla build is by far the most clean and it is clear to me that you have learned something along the way of building all these coils.
But my advice is to take a step back and look at your coils, are they really build from quality components with no disregard in the construction as to minimize losses and inductance, have you done everything and invested the money needed to build a high performance Tesla coil?
To answer your question, yes sparks will be longer in dry air, it was a single google search to find a short and precise paper on it:
To me this is two-sided, humidity will be a part of it, but so is your construction and build quality.
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
Usually the spark length is pretty much independent of atmospheric conditions, because the channel is very hot plasma (1000s of °C) and it vaporises any humidity. The humidity has an effect on break down voltage and probably not much effect on spark growth. With very high output voltage coils (SGTCs) it might have effect on the spark length of *ground strikes*.
Having run my coils in both low humidity environments (less than 30% in cold weather) as well as in hot, humid environments (>25C, >90% humidity), I found that they didn't really seem to have a noticeable effect on spark length for Tesla Coils, be it solid state or spark gap. (This is a different story for electrostatic devices such as Wimshurst machines).
Here is my coil running in a hot ~29C night at what must be at least 90% humidity. The uneven toroid with lots of sharp points from the peeling aluminium foil didn't seem to impede spark performance, but I suppose it would be slightly better with a smooth toroid.
As what Mads Barnkob said, I think the best way to go is to continue working on building a good coil. Feel free to ask questions!
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Humidity and spark length
