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A new magnifier resonator design?
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From: Jim Monte [SMTP:JDM95003-at-UCONNVM.UCONN.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 1998 4:42 PM
To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: A new magnifier resonator design?
Hi,
With all of the discussions about magnifiers lately, I thought this may
be a good time to ask about a resonator design that I've been
considering. Something that has been bothering me about Tesla coils
in general is that the top electrode seems like an "add on". That is,
the toroid does not look like it really belongs there. Aesthetics aside,
there does not seem to be a smooth transition between the wire on the
coil and the top capacitor. This discontinuity could cause the toroid
to resonate separately to some extent at a fairly high frequency and
prevent energy from being delivered to a deserving streamer.
As an alternative, consider using a pancake coil as the resonator with
the outermost turn consisting of large-diameter aluminum ducting matched
to the wire by a conical section. This section could be formed by
cutting and shaping the end of the ducting, similar to a horn antenna
being used to match a waveguide to free space. If the radius of
curvature of the ducting is large enough to prevent breakout, the
streamers could be focused by making another cone (well, a conical
frustum) on the other end, matching the ducting to a hemisphere of
appropriate radius for breakout.
Comments? Opinions? One that I had when I first thought of this was
"OK, maybe it will work, but how can I wind it??" One solution
would be to use type UF electrical wire resting on an insulating
platform. UF wire contains no paper, and I think it is available
ungrounded. A trifilar coil made up of UF-14/3 would be able to handle
some very large peak currents. UF wire is also very flat, almost
rectangular in cross-section, so the windings would naturally stay in
place. Probably only a bit of polyurethane would be needed as a glue.
Has this been done already? If so, what were ther results?
Jim Monte