Re: failed cap

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: BunnyKiller <bunikllr-at-bellsouth-dot-net> 

Hi Phil...

hmmmmmm    building ones own cap...    you didnt see my website did you ??  ;)

no matter how hard you try to build your own cap ( and yes Ive built 3 of 
them and all 3 failed  eventually  the plate cap lasted the longest
but it was made from ultra clean PE sheeting 70thou thick with REAL 
transformer oil...) its best to buy a manufactured cap set    be it an 
MMC   or Maxwell's systems on Ebay ( best prices Ive seen as to date)
..  I have done rolled caps   plate caps glass caps and wasted alot of $ 
doing so  ( but hey  it was a learning experience and ehhhhhh  yes...
it was expensive)

definately sounds like you have blown a hole in the dielectric ( PE 
sheeting)  and the oil is arcing out  ( pull it apart and look for the 
black holes in the plastic) ...the spark gap at that setting is less of a 
resistive value than oil in the cap... yes most definately ..   without a 
secondary in place to "asorb" the energy the cap will arc out first....


bite the bullet and buy a set of MMC caps or a set of Maxwells   dont do 
what I did and waste your money trying to build a home made cap...
unless you like learning the hard way   ......

Scot D


Tesla list wrote:

>Original poster: "philip barnes" <luck_phil87-at-hotmail-dot-com>
>Hi.
>    i built a cap with 1.6 mm or 64 mil thick PE dielectric and put the 
> whole thing in canola oil. It worked great for a while but while i had 
> just the cap across the nst ,,, with no tesla coil connected.. to test my 
> new mulitgap sparkgap... the PE between 2 of the plates broke down and 
> now it blows bubbles and hisses and only produces a spark in the gap if 
> the gap is 1 mm or 30 mil . Its pretty much had it and must be breaking 
> down at 1 or 2 thousand volts..IS it more stressfull on a cap with no 
> tesla coil connected and is it suprising my cap did not last in my 
> config. The plates are 1.75" clearance from each end and 1" along the 
> sides. !6 sheets of makes each layer
>
>Phil
>
>