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Registered Member #1875
Joined: Sun Dec 21 2008, 06:36PM
Location:
Posts: 635
You can't assume that power factor is 1 unless you have a basic heater or incandescent light bulb (ohmic resistance, not reactance, which is what you have in inductive and capacitive elements).
The "Kill-a-watt" is a handy device that radio shack sells for about 30 dollars and it can tell you amperage, wattage, VA, and power factor for those too lazy for arithmetic.
Anyway, to attempt to address the problems dex outlined, you could raise your capacitance value (and adjust the primary accordingly), and perhaps consider sticking a fan on the spark gap. Perhaps you could find one you could run off a small cell phone charger for the sake of size. Just keep an eye on the current ratings on the fan and supply. This might help with quenching. Also, make sure the spark gaps are spread out as far as possible. They look a bit close, but with only 5kv they probably have to be.
Registered Member #2566
Joined: Wed Dec 23 2009, 05:52PM
Location:
Posts: 147
Power factor = 1 is not possible in theory (under assumption of zero loss!) due to reactive specifity of circuit that charges SGTC .Only in AC networks with pure resistance power factor can be 1.The highest power factors have SRSG and resonant DC charger powered coils (aprox 0,9).With so conservative gap spacing and small cap size I doubt the power factor of the coil is over 0,6 .Having said that I am not suggesting you to open gap much more.That can kill NST.The best thing you can do increase bang energy with more primary capacitance and tune the coil accordingly.I am telling you that bang size,especially for small coils,is a very important thing.For example,my SGTC delivers about 0,4 Joules per discharge.Yours?I can't predict how your spark gap will tolerate more energy per pulse.This you must experiment with and see yourself.I just say what is better if you want more output from such kind of coil. Regarding Peter (aka TDU) I also like his creative work. But he said many times he was not interested in efficiency and spark lenght questions.I think he built his briefcase coil to be easily portable ,with safe and low power output (small kids are involved in his demos too).
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Briefcase SGTC --- 1st build ever --- copy of TDU's awesome work