blown triggered gap

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" LINK="#0000CC" ALINK="#800299" VLINK="#663399"> <div> <I>blown triggered gap</I></div> <div> i have since built a triggered gap that i can pull air though with a turbo style blower unit that i have. a friend of mine has built the triggered gap to see how it performs under the high currents from a pole pig, he has seen  that the arc has a hard time quenching, even with a strong air stream from a compressor blow gun. these are some of the things that i will have to sort out, but i feel they are very trivial.</div> <div> after all, there are no problems, only solutions.</div> <div> i started with a piece of, 1.5"od x 10" x 1/8" wall thickness, pyrex glass tube. it was initialy used in the automatic miking parlors for the transfer of milk to the bulk tank, i have a bunch of curved, straight and offset pieces i picked up at a farmers flee market.</div> <div> <IMG SRC="15925dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> as you can see, the tube lays nicely on the glass standoffs from neon sighns. i needed a way to get the trigger electrode into the center of the gap, i didn't want to push ALL the leads into the open end, so i decided to cut a hole in the pyrex.</div> <div> i used a green cup wheel chuck into my bench drill press, did you know that the little rubber arbors for small drum sanders work great for mounting grinding wheels with large holes? anyway!</div> <div> <IMG SRC="15b25dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> <IMG SRC="15d25dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> <IMG SRC="15f25dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> i used mineral oil in a eye drops bottle and set the speed to it's lowest, kept a steady stream of oil on the point where the oil touched the tube and surenough, in a very short time i had a beautiful slot cut into it. </div> <div> <IMG SRC="16125dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> i cut aluminum sheet stock to just fit into the tube, i used these for mounting the electrodes to and slid surgical tubing over the 8g hv wire. this wire is great, it's fine stranded and silver plated, wish i had 1000' of this stuff? </div> <div> i taped the vacuum tube for the blower onto the oposite end and am now ready to try it out.</div> <div> <IMG SRC="16425dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> <IMG SRC="16625dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> <IMG SRC="16825dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <div> i wanted this air blown gap so that i can run my expirements on getting the gap to quench at high break rates, maybe at least 13khz - 33khz or above. (i'm hoping anyway?)</div> <bR> <div> i put the gap into operation on my little coil (wich i need to deliver one of these days?), the blower atatched, the gap set at 1.25" apart and the dimmer at half mast.</div> <div> <IMG SRC="16a25dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"> still running ac from the 12\30nst <IMG SRC="16c25dc0.jpg" border=0 width="293" height="220" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0">pic of the gap firing with my digital cammera</div> </BODY>