Re: Coil problem

• To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
• Subject: Re: Coil problem
• From: FutureT-at-aol-dot-com
• Date: Sat, 4 Jan 1997 01:48:41 -0500
• Subscriber: FutureT-at-aol-dot-com Sat Jan 4 21:22:55 1997

In a message dated 97-01-04 00:51:39 EST, you write:

<< 
 >  -- Bert --
 >   >>
 > I've been using motor starter capacitors for PFC on my neons,  why are
these
 > caps undesirable; danger of shorting out and/or blowing up?
 > 
 > Happy coiling,
 > 
 >    John Freau
 
 "John,
 
"> Motor starting caps tend to be rather inexpensively made, planned for
 only intermittent usage, have higher Equivalent Series Resistance, and
 generally tend not to be nearly as "robust" as film caps made for
 continuous duty (and generally higher voltage). If you run motor
 starting caps for relatively brief times during coiling, they may work
 OK. But if you can get better ones cheaply, its probably wise to do so. 
 
 BTW, have you noticed any heating or cap failures when using these as
 PFC's? Since I've not to used them (for the above reasons), I don't have
> any run-time experience with them.
 
 >-- Bert -- "
  Bert,

No failures yet,  I use the ones with the black bakelite plastic tubular
cases that have a metal toothed ring pressed into the end to hold in the evil
guts of it.    I can't remember for sure if they got warm or not--it's
possible they got a little warm.  I know if they got quite warm, I would have
remembered it.  BTW, I used them on a 12 kV, 30 ma unit.  I tried both 26 uF
and 56 uF values (not at the same time), didn't make much difference in
current input or spark output.  But either value of course reduced the
current compared with no PFC at all.

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