Re: rotary spark gap

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

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

Hi Justin,

At 02:01 AM 7/28/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Sorry but I have another question you guys out there. I hope I'm not being a 
>pain in the a** but I just have a lot of things that I wonder about. 

Asking questions and sharing information is why we are all here :-))


>What I 
>was wondering was in place of a synchronous motor for a rotary spark gap, 
>couldn't a non synchronous motor be used in conjunction with a variac. That 
>way the speed of the motor could be adjusted until the best results are 
>achieved. Maybe I'm just missing something. 

While you could get it to basically work, I ma not sure it would be any
better than a static gap and maybe much worse.  The motor's speed would be
very difficult to control accurately.  Best case is you would get close but
the gaps and the AC signals would never stay locked together.  Async gaps
are really only useful when you can run at 240BPS and higher with a pig or
other high energy source.

I would definitely go for a sync motor if you are going to all the trouble
to make the rotary gap anyway.  It is not very hard at all (although,
Jonathon just reported problems...).

http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/sync_motor.txt
http://hot-streamer-dot-com/TeslaCoils/Misc/syncmot.zip

Be sure to use properly set safety gaps across the NST, at the least, when
experimenting with gaps! 

Cheers,

	Terry


>                                        Justin
>