Re: Super Small TC

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

Original poster: "Jim Mitchell" <Electrontube-at-sbcglobal-dot-net> 

I did this a while ago,  with a 1" by 1" secondary.  I ran it spark gap at
first,  then converted to solid state.  You can see it here
www.hot-streamer-dot-com/electrontube/micro.

Regards - Jim Mitchell
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Saturday, July 10, 2004 11:52 PM
Subject: Super Small TC


 > Original poster: "Chris Fanjoy" <zappyman-at-hotmail-dot-com>
 >
 > I'm not sure whether this project was a waste of time or not. I had set
 > aside work on my big coil because I can't afford a good pulse cap right
 > now, but I thought I'd try something else in the meantime. I had purchased
 > a large spool of #38 AWG magnet wire, for reasons which I can't even
 > remember, and I wondered if I could use this to produce a super-small
tesla
 > coil. So I set to work to wind the smallest TC secondary possible, and in
 > less than on hour this is what I had produced: approx. 450 windings on a
 > 1/2" wide, 2" long paper tube - with no breaks or overlap! According to
 > various TC calculating tools, the resonant frequency was quite high -
 > somewhere in the 4 MHz range. So I built a small flat-spiral primary (#16
 > AWG) and a proper-sized tank cap - which only required three small PPS
 > (poly-phenylene substrate, I think) caps. For a power supply, I used an
old
 > TV flyback transformer and set the spark gap to about 3kV. With! tuning,
 > the best spark I could get from the secondary was about 1/16" (with no
 > topload). Obviously there are some problems somewhere! As a newbie I'd
love
 > to know where I went wrong, though I'm sure there are plenty of errors in
 > this unusual design. The first thing I'm thinking is that a flat-spiral
 > primary isn't right for a coil this small, and maybe a helical one would
 > work better.
 > Any advice would be appreciated.
 >
 >
 >