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Registered Member #1845
Joined: Fri Dec 05 2008, 05:38AM
Location: California
Posts: 211
I built a twin coil system yesterday, and I have absolutely no idea why its not working. It has an MMC bank, rotary spark gap, and two primaries in series. The power supply is three 12/30 NST's in parallel.
So when I plug it in, the rotary spark gap fires away, but there are no sparks at all coming from the toroids. I don't know what I could have possibly done wrong.
Is the MMC in a system with two primary coils supposed to be between the two primaries???? I have the mmc coming off one HV terminal of the nst bank, then the two primaries in series, and then back to the other HV terminal of the nst bank. The spark gap is properly oriented as well.
I know the secondaries are earth grounded, the power supply works, the mmc bank is brand new, etc. No arcing occurs anywhere except the rotary spark gap. But the energy is definitely not being dumped into the tank circuit.... no clue why
Registered Member #1845
Joined: Fri Dec 05 2008, 05:38AM
Location: California
Posts: 211
Just a noob-check: do you have the spark gap IN PARALLEL with the NST, the MMC and primaries IN SERIES and connected at the spark gap terminals?
Yes, I do
I will go change the amount of primary turns and see what happens. I'll use a flourescent bulb too.
At first I did suspect the coils might be out of tune, but I shrugged the thought off... thinking that even if they were really out of tune, I should AT LEAST be seeing maybe 3 inch sparks. Mayber they are so out of tune that no sparks occur at all.
My primary coil for each secondary is tapped at 13.4 turns right now. I am using brass weatherstrip. 13.4 turns sounded like a good start to me. My secondary is probably 950 turns.
Registered Member #1845
Joined: Fri Dec 05 2008, 05:38AM
Location: California
Posts: 211
GOOD NEWS.....
The coils are now working.... you guys were right, they were just horribly out of tune. As I stated earlier I had 13.4 turns, I kept reducing it and now I'm playing with the tuning at around 7 turns. So before I had about TWICE the necessary number of turns.
However, it is still unimpressive. Each coil is making maybe 16 inch sparks. But I hope I'll be able to tune this system to something way better than that. (I should be able to) I haven't even done adjustments smaller than one full turn yet. Back to the garage I go.....
Registered Member #152
Joined: Sun Feb 12 2006, 03:36PM
Location: Czech Rep.
Posts: 3384
SteveC wrote ...
GOOD NEWS.....
The coils are now working.... you guys were right, they were just horribly out of tune. As I stated earlier I had 13.4 turns, I kept reducing it and now I'm playing with the tuning at around 7 turns. So before I had about TWICE the necessary number of turns.
However, it is still unimpressive. Each coil is making maybe 16 inch sparks. But I hope I'll be able to tune this system to something way better than that. (I should be able to) I haven't even done adjustments smaller than one full turn yet. Back to the garage I go.....
Try the primaries in parallel (each 14 turns). Maybe you will get a bit more efficiency.
Registered Member #1845
Joined: Fri Dec 05 2008, 05:38AM
Location: California
Posts: 211
Ok so heres my final update on the progress.
I tuned it really good with the primaries and series, and then I tuned it pretty good with the primaries in parallel. Parallel actually worked slightly better,,, so I'll stick with parallel for now.
I could never make the two coils connect their sparks with a 6 foot gap, so I'll shorten the gap 16 inches, and then they should strike eachother.
pretty soon I'll post pictures and I'll take a video also. I'll put the pics and the video in the projects forum.
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problems with twin coil system
