On Sat, 26 Nov 2005 11:56:55 +0200, Paul Keinanen
wrote:

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 12:29:52 -0800, Roy Lewallen
wrote:

Paul Keinanen wrote:
. . .
You must have quite slow fuses in 110 V land if you can do a reliable
ignition without blowing the fuse. For 230 V operation, I would
suggest using a current limiting resistor (such as a large heater) or
an inductance (such as fluorescent light ballast) during the ignition.
When there is a solid arc, the current limiter can be shorted out.


Aren't you in danger of damaging your eyes from the UV emitted from the arc?

Certainly.

I used arc welding glasses when conducing these experiments.

Some trivia:

In the silent film era, actors had eye problems due to the UV
radiation from arc studio lamps.

Most of the usable illumination from the arc lights is actually from
the glowing carbon electrodes.

"Automatic arc lights" used a solenoid in series with the arc to keep
the distance constant between the poles regardless of carbon electrode
burnout. I assume that if this is to be used with a AC arc light, both
the moving coil as well as the static coil should carry the arc
current.

Paul OH3LWR

We worked with a company that was developing an xray imager, and was
buying very expensive electrically conductive glass (gigohms per
square sort of range.) They discovered that certain welding glass was
identical and about 1/20 the price.

John