What difference does wire size on a tesla coil primary make


Penguin , Sunday, 15th of August 2010 10:25:39 PM

l know that for the primary that you are supposed to use the largest 
Penguin
surface area that you can for the tesla coil. and i've seen that is true 
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as i've made primarys from stranded wire and then small solid gauge and 
Joined: Wednesday, 28th of April 2010, 06:06:28
then thicker solid gauge with increasing performance with thicker wire. 
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now l have a 360 watt nst and wanna know if l will ever be able to get to 
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full potential output on the tesla coil if l just keep on using sold gauge 
wire. i've seen even really really small coils have huge (comparitively) 
copper tubing for a primary.....so is the tubing pretty much a must if l 
want the best output on the tesla coil?
 
 
 
 
 

howwy bowwy , Monday, 16th of August 2010 04:57:08 PM

For my tesla coil I used the 18 gauge copper stranded conductor  
howwy bowwy
designed for use with a nst on the primary side. My tesla coil worked well  
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having an arc length of about 12+ inches. The biggest challenge I had was  
Joined: Tuesday, 1st of June 2010, 07:58:05
arcing from the primary conductors to the secondary side which obviously  
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limited the efficiency. I had to increase the diameter of my primary coil  
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to compensate.  
 
As far as ur question. I think the design has a much greater impact on  
the performance of ur tesla coil rather than primary conductor material.  
 
Watch out, that machine can shock the devil out of you. Speaking from  
experience.  
 
 
 
 
 

Kid Friday , Tuesday, 17th of August 2010 04:49:14 AM

Electric charge travels over the surface of a conductor. A  
Kid Friday
larger conductor has more surface area, thus a higher current with less  
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heating can be carried.  
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'' Generally copper tubing is used in these coils because it has a high  
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surface area for low resistance, and no sharp corners to suppress corona  
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losses. I use 1/4'' tubing.''  
 
 
 
 
 



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