Comment by lightedman
1 day ago
Everything looks nice but something very important was not considered in all of this.
High voltage and high current means Z-pinch - the conductor itself is going to compress itself, thus resulting in basically delaminating from the glass sheathing. This is why we have rubber/petroleum-based flexible sticky insulators on cabling like that, it can somewhat flex/shrink with the conductor and is more likely to stay attached and less likely to get damaged.
Just transmit laser power down fiber optics at that point. Either way you're going to need semiconductor switching (it's IGBTs all the way down baby!) nothing electromechanical is going to handle that kind of load.
High voltage does not induce pinch, only current. High voltage is used to create bursts of high current in can-crushing demonstrations. The cable is solid and the current is not concentrated in a thin cylindrical shell. The pinch is negligible, certainly in comparison to eg thermal expansion from changing load conditions.
> Just transmit laser power down fiber optics at that point.
How does that work? You can only get the glass so clear, so you're going to lose all the energy. There's no equivalent to cranking the voltage to increase range.