[TCML] Spark gap fan smoked

[otmaskin5@xxxxxxx]

Hi, happy holidays everyone.  For the first time in the 4 years since I built my first coil (15/60), I finally seem to have it running great without problems.  Strikes to ground targets are reaching out into the low 50"s at a conservative 0.18" spark gap setting & variac driving it at no more than 120v (problem with the sweeper & it won't quite get to 120v).  So I'm fairly pleased with the performance given I'm not pushing the coil too hard to do what it's doing.  Best of all, I finally reached the point where I seem to have eliminated all the other issues like racing sparks & incessant safety gap firing.  So that's the good part.

Then, yesterday I was just enjoying playing with the coil & watching the sparks when smoke started pouring out of the segmented spark gap.  Looks like I burned up the 340 cfm 5" muffin fan for the spark gap...which brings me to my question.  When wiring in the fan, I had only the hot & neutral wires going back to the mains, not the 3d prong ground.  I had the chassis of the fan grounded to the NST case which is connected to the RF ground and a pipe driven into the ground outside of the garage.  This is the second fan that I smoked and both were wired in the same fashion.  I'm wondering whether I got it wrong relative to grounding the fan to the RF ground. - I thought this was a best practice, but maybe not.  I'd welcome any suggestions.  Thanks, Dennis Hopkinton MA
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