Spinning up the Spark Gap Motor

Finished the last bit of wiring on the synchronous motor and the step down transformer supplying it. Annoyingly the little ceramic 3 pole terminal block cracked when re-mounting it, on closer inspection it really is a horribly made piece of crap from B+Q. I have ordered a similar looking unit from eBay tonight, hopefully it's better quality and will fit the mount holes already drilled, if not I may create my own from a block of perspex. Anyway time to plug in the the spark gap module. Fingers crossed.

Well that went pretty well. The spark gap disc seems to be well balanced and the motor is very quiet, not that that will make any difference once the gaps are firing. The motor took more than 40 seconds to come to a complete rest after unplugging. There is a fair bit of weight involved in the spark gap disc but I still think this is a good indication to the quality of the bearings in this little motor.

Hers's a close-up of the cracked terminal block. I had to remove it when I was wiring in the cable in the pic as I had trouble tightening the cable clamp screws. When I checked the screw heads non of the slots were formed correctly. I used the 2 best formed clamp screws to secure the new wiring and refitted the block, this is when it cracked. Two steps forward, one step back.


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