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From: "Robert A. Shannon" 
Subject: Tesla Turbine Info!
Message-ID: <4F06+YWIVkA@cs010.NECTECH.COM>
Date: Wed, 18 Oct 95 14:34:11 EDT

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Hey turbine fans, check this out!

I close associate of mine spend many thousands of dollars building a
Tesla Turbine prototype, which works, but has some problems as well.

I will describe what he built, and where the problems arise to advoid
others the expensive lessons we learned from this.

My associate Hal had a machine shop construct this device, based on
his understanding of the original patents long before these turbines
became popular for pumping live fish.

His version has several flaws you need to stay away from repeating.
first, he used a large number of physically small disks rather than a
small number of large diameter disks as TEsla prefered.  This greatly
increases the stress each disk must withstand, and this is also the
reason that Hal opted to use a larger number of smaller disks.

Do not do this, efficency drops disproportionaly with smaller diameter
disks!

Efficency also raises as rotational speed increases.  We used a
vaccume source and a smoke pencil to discover why, as the speed
increases, the lenght of disk surface at which the flow (steam,
vaccume, what have you) clings to the disk surface increases, and
therefore the transfer of energy from flow to disk also increases.

I realize that is disagrees with much of what is known about these
devices, it is claimed that torque is maximum at low speed.  This has
not proven to be the case.

After seeing the prototype Hal had contracted, I was reminded of the
HDA, or head-disk assembly of a (then) high capacity disk drive known
as a Fijitsu "Eagle".  These HDA's are still available.  One of these
was disasselbled, and a manifold was made from cardboard and duct
tape.  This kludge was far more efficient than the custom machined
version just about right out of the box.

Such a HDA sustains 3600 rpm all day for years, and uses ferrofluid
barings and other high tech goodies for turbine fans.  The cast
enclosure is near strong enough to contain a rotor failure, but not
quite!

The keys to high efficiency appear to be a small number of large
diameter disks, and a well tuned feed mainifold.  Try tinkering with a
HDA much like that of the now old Eagle drives before sinking any
money into machine shops, you will be quite supprised at the results!

If you can understand how tunned exaust helps a good sports car, you
will see how the turbine demands such resperation as well.  The
Fijutsu Eagle has access plates which can be removed to allow a fancy
tunned feed system to be fitted.

We blew the doors off the custom machined version with a few minutes
of tinkering.  Hal was not happy, but he has the damn best desktop
paperweight you have ever seen.

->  Posted by: "Robert A. Shannon" 

---SnetMgr 0.60 [r0001]
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