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Well, I seem to have exhausted thoroughly exhausted all my patience and most of my recources with this coil.
The problem- no matter what I do on the primary side, I can't seem to get any output from the secondary.
Now, this should be all but impossible. I use a MOT system, and this thing channels 4kW of power. 4 microwave transformers in paralell-series config for 8kV, and I it has tripped 40 amps worth of breaker. Beautiful jacob's ladder from the power supply. But no matter what I do, I can't seem to get any resonance at all. Not really even any induction.
I'm using a SW tank cap (since I don't have 50 beer bottles lying around) which should give somewhere in the neighborhood of 100uf capacitance. Should. Anyways, I don't know, since I only extrapulated from a capacitor calcuilator site. It's a 12 gallon container full to almost the brim with brine. I'm just kinda going with it on my spark gap- I have a multi gap that seems to just not want to work consistently. But I can set it real good and get it to work for a while. My secondary is about 1.5 feet tall and wound on 3 inch PVC with MOT secondary wire (don't ever wind a secondary with wire from a MOT) of just a little over 30awg. I've enameled it very thoroughly, and I did have to repair two breaks in it (which I did by hooking it up to an OBIT and letting it melt the faults together- smart, eh? at least I didn't let 8 hours of winding go to waste) And I was using a toroid of 2 metal bowls, but discontinued their use until I can get it tuned well.
Does anyone have any tips for me? I'm really in a bind, and I'm just a poor kid. So an inexpensive solution would be helpful.
Registered Member #76
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 10:04AM
Location: Hemer, Germany
Posts: 458
did you mean 100µF capacitance or 100nF . if the cap has 100µF this is your problem, . a 100µF cap even for 4 mots is way too much and cant be charged within a halfwave, so you dont get any output.
if the cap has 100nF i dont know what your problem is, even if you calculated everything wrong you should get output from the secondary
Registered Member #162
Joined: Mon Feb 13 2006, 10:25AM
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 3141
A few things that come to my mind; 1 I'd be surprised if the capacitor is even 100nF - but that's not important for now 2 MOTs are 'famous' for causing 'power-arcing' of spark gaps i.e. once the sparkgap 'fires' it stays 'on' due to hot ions in the gap So... blow the gap(s) with a powerful fan - initially try a vacuum cleaner on 'blow' 3 If the saprk gap(s) make a loud sharp sound withthin blue/white sparks that's good if the sparkgaps give fat yellowish or greenish colour you've got 'power-arcing' 4 Use one of the many online Tesla Coil calculators to see if the primary and secondary are at similar frequencies (difficult if you don't know the primary capacitor value) 5 connect a neon bulb or a xenon flash tube across the secondary to see ANY reasonable output
Registered Member #79
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 11:35AM
Location: Arkansas
Posts: 673
Hey, I'll all about cheap. All of my coils until recently have been geared toward cheap-as-possible. Could you give us some pictures?
I'd be interested to see: The tank cap construction Layout of power plant Secondary/Primary layout
You might find some tips at my site (in the signature), it has alot about making sure your MOT power plant is set up right and some about capacitors (more toward bottle caps, 'cause I haven't uploaded the new stuff yet). Anything else, I'll be happy to help.
BTW, my coil is halfway down this page if you want to peek
Registered Member #96
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 05:37PM
Location: CI, Earth
Posts: 4062
King_of_Junk wrote ...
Well, I seem to have exhausted thoroughly exhausted all my patience and most of my recources with this coil.
. I've enameled it very thoroughly, and I did have to repair two breaks in it (which I did by hooking it up to an OBIT and letting it melt the faults together- smart, eh? at least I didn't let 8 hours of winding go to waste)
And merry Christmas.
Hmm. I'd have twisted the wires together and soldered it, all that current going through the secondary might have overheated the windings causing inter-turn shorts..
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Coil Problems
