RE: dimmer switches

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>

Hi Gary,

I was basically thinking of taking a common store bought dimmer and adding
a few protection circuits to protect it from such things.  What did it do
to the dimmer?  Did it short to the always on condition?, catch fire?  Just
curiuous about what needs to be done to provide protection.  Dimmers also
present a different source impedance to the typical Telsa coil circuit
which may alter a finely tuned coils performance in unknown ways.

Cheers,

	Terry 

At 05:46 PM 7/4/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>One thing I would add - Do not connect the dimmer case to RF ground.
>The voltage spikes between the RF ground and the mains lines arced over
>on one I was using to control my vacuum cleaner motor and destroyed the
>dimmer.
>
>Gary Lau
>MA, USA
>
> -----Original Message-----
>From: 	Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com] 
>Sent:	Wednesday, July 04, 2001 12:40 PM
>To:	tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
>Subject:	Re: dimmer switches
>
>Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>
>
>Hi,
>
>I have never used dimmers but there are a few things I know to watch out
>for.
>
>Get the biggest wattage you can find.  the higher the wattage the bigger
>the
>traics in them and the tougher they are.
>
>You need to be very careful of voltage spikes.  Maybe get a bunch of
>MOVs from
>Radio Shack to be sure a spike does not blow it up.
>
>One big thing to watch out for is that if the dimmer fails, it will fail
>in the
>100% ON condition.  That could be pretty exciting if you are tuning your
>coil
>or really don't want full power just then...
>
>Variacs are far nicer in that very little can go wrong with them.  But
>dimmers
>are far easier to get.  Maybe someone could figure out a good rock solid
>dimmer
>circuit to replace a variac for at least the lower powered coils...
>
>Cheers,
>
>        Terry
>
>
>At 04:42 AM 7/4/2001 -0400, you wrote: 
>>
>> Can anyone tell me if using a 400w dimmer to control a 8000v/50ma neon
>would 
>> do it any harm ? 
>
>
>
>