method to protect power supply from HV arc starter?

[coppercone2]

I am interested in using a lab power supply with some kind of HV sparker to use it to try to control arcs. Like a pilot arc.

Getting the arc into the circuit seems easy enough, but I am worried about protecting the power supply. Say a sorensen.

Like if i wanna put a BBQ starter on it with a coupling transformer.


My first thought is foil capacitor of moderate size. and a TVS diode

is that enough?

[moffy]

With the HeNe lasers we used the 10kV HV pulse transformer was just placed in series with the 1.5kV HV, no real protection, but then the HV was only a few 'ma'. The HV would discharge through the tube into some 200V FETs that had some series balast resistors, I can't remember there being a single failure of one of the FETs.