Re: Rotary gap safety - RE: spark gap muffler?

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 5/25/01 5:49:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time, tesla-at-pupman-dot-com 
writes: 


>
> Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net> 
>
> Hi Chris, and Gregory, 
>
> I saw a video once of one of Greg Leyh's big rotary gaps coming apart at an 
> SRL show.  The parts breaking away (a bearing got a primary arc and 
> suddenly welded solid I think) hit that shield like a ton of bricks!! 
> Heavy steel plate, well bolted down, not only to control parts but to 
> literally control an "explosion" is needed!  If the rotor comes off, or 
> worse, cracks away so it suddenly becomes super unbalanced, you will have a 
> monster on your hands really fast!! 
>
> I looked at: 
> http://www.srl-dot-org/ 
> but they don't have a video of it up.  It was pretty cool!!   
>
> This is obviously a much larger concern for a publicly demonstrated coil 
> with an audience filled with lawyers...  A daily inspection probably with a 
> check sheet is a good idea to insure consistent safety.  Small low RPM 
> rotors are far more tame but I always position the rotor so I am not in the 
> plane of the disk incase something flies off and I usually have Shields 
> unless I am fiddling with them :-))   
>
> Cheers, 
>
>    Terry 



Hi Terry, Chris, et al! 

Here is a quick table of how fast things are thrown from the edge of a disk 
running at 3600 RPM. As you can see, things get real nasty, real quick. 
Diam    Tangential 
(in.)        velocity (mph) 
4.00 42.8 
5.00 53.5 
6.00 64.3 
7.00 75.0 
8.00 85.7 
9.00 96.4 
10.00 107.1 
11.00 117.8 
12.00 128.5 

Matt D.