Re: Static Gap question.

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

Original poster: Ed Phillips <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net> 

"Dave,

I have some rare earth neodynium (did I spell that
right?) magnets I pulled out of some old hard drives.
I wonder if they would have suffient strength to
quench such a gap at about 1KVA or so.  How about
2KVA?  I know some people have claimed success with
magnetic quenching in the past and I've always wanted
to try it.  I think I'll search the archives.

-Brett"

	Perhaps Antonio can provide an input on that, particularly on the
magnetic field strength required.  I suspect that the answer to your
question is YES - I've been thinking about that myself - but that you'll
need an iron or steel magnetic circuit to control the fields
appropriately.  Magnets from hard drives come in many different sizes,
getting smaller with time as the drives get smaller.  A few years ago
someone at worked scrapped some very old IBM drives (the kind that were
used with a big pack of "platters") and some of the magnets from those
weighed over a pound.  Someone brought one into my office and we got it
stuck to the side of a file cabinet.  In order to get it off we finally
had to set up an arrangement so we could slide it over an edge where it
was possible to get a good grip on it.  Something that size would
probably quench one of the old time arc transmitters!

	Seems to me someone in this group has replicated a low-power arc
oscillator and might have some comments on the design of the magnet he
used.

Ed