Tesla coil USED to be thought to be an air cored RF transformer but
so much work has been done in the past 20 years to advance them, to
where people make very efficient tesla coils with voltage gain much
higher than can be predicted by stepping up via transformer action.
Degree of coupling and Q are more important than # of turns, per se.
Especially interesting are the Tesla magnifiers, such as groups of
hobbyists like the Richmond, Virginia group have been building. Do a
websearch for the Tesla coil stuff, to read more. As a member of the
Tesla Coil Builders Association, I have found it parallels high power
RF work, in a primative way, i.e. damped spark gap excitation versus
continuous oscillations from active devices with thermionics or
silicon. Tesla has always been my hero, although he was a bit of a
strange dude.
A recent failure of the 500 kW Sri Lanka VOA transmitter which
burned > a million dollar facility, has been speculated by some
within that organization to be due to "Tesla Coil" effects in the
inductor coming from the modulator/PWM filter. Otherwise the amount
of voltage and current which did the damage is hard to imagine from
the normal operating parameters.
John
K5PRO
At 11:53 PM -0400 9/13/00, owner-amps-digest@contesting.com (RF
Amplifier Discussion Dige wrote:
>From: "Tom Rauch" <w8ji@contesting.com>
>Subject: Re: [AMPS] Shorted Pi-Networks Turns revisited
>
> > A while ago, there was a question involving subject of band switches
>> able to short out coil turns, so no leads remain unshorted and therefore
>> avoid Tesla coil effect.
>
>The effect is not a Tesla-coil effect
>per se.
>
>The Tesla coil depends on a step-up transformer using magnetic
>coupling.
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