Odp: Odp: [sdiy] About that spherical impulse generator...

[harrybissell]

I understand the problem. Its going to be tough to actively quench the are...
otoh
I don't think you have to. You're thinking that we need a lot of joules, not so.
You need
enough voltage to start the arc. After that, the size of the capacitor will
pretty much limit
how long the arc takes to extinguish.

You might try making a very large step-up transformer and making a 'spark plug'
to get
the arc as well... that might allow you to shorten the arc conduction by playing
tricks with the
transformer primary....

H^) harry

Glen wrote:

> At 05:26 PM 1/10/04 , harrybissell wrote:
>
> There is one more requirement for any electrical discharge acoustic impulse
> generator. Ideally, the acoustic impulse needs to be approximately 1/3 the
> time duration of one sample period. Shorter is much better than longer in
> this case.
>
> If I calculated correctly, a sample rate of 44.1 kHz needs an acoustic
> pulse of roughly 7.5 microseconds in length. A sample rate of 96 kHz would
> need a pulse of roughly 3.5 microseconds in length.
>
> We need good control over the duration of the arc. Simply letting the
> voltage rise across some electrodes till it arcs over, probably won't cut
> it. I think we probably need some way to extinguish the arc at a
> predictable time, other than only filling a capacitor with enough joules to
> create an arc of a particular time length and letting the arc die on its own.
>
> later,
> Glen Berry