| ELECTRIC DISCHARGE EXPERIMENTS |
| The discharge on the top of the tesla coils has a different behaviour depending the shape of the used topload. In my experiments I used three kinds of toploads (toroid, sphere, sphere + toroid) with variate results: |
| Toroid The toroid has a better shielding effect on the top turns suppressing corona production. If it has sharp points on its surface, the streamers break all around, wasting the energy in multiple streamers. If the toroid has a big diameter the streamers will go orisontally and up with no strikes to the primary. |
| Sphere The sphere doesn't present the " electrostatic umbrella effect" so the shielding of the top turns is minimal (they will spray heavy corona). With good top turns insulation the voltage will increase at high values before the breakout, so the sparks will be longer than with a toroid. |
| Toroid + sphere This kind of topload adds the advantage of a higher secondary top capacitanceto the corona suppression, permiting some nice healthy discharges. |
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