Re: Home made capacitors rule..sort of

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

Original poster: Bart Anderson <classi6-at-classictesla-dot-com> 

Hi Philip,

TYpical meters with a capacitance function work fine for tank capacitance 
direct measurement. The tank cap value is typically in the range of most 
meters capabilities.

Bart

Tesla list wrote:

>Original poster: "Philip Brinkman" <peeceebee-at-mindspring-dot-com>
>     After looking at many of the capacitor designs out there, I feel the
>home made stacked plate design is the easiest, cheapest, and strongest
>design out there. I don't understand why so many people say the MMC design
>is easier... soldering together 20 or so caps, assembling the base board,
>resistors, wires, etc.and spending all that money does not seem easy to me.
>    I built a "notebook capacitor" using extra heavy duty plastic notbook
>sheet protectors (5 mils thick) and aluminum foil sheets. Each page was
>filled with mineal oil, an extra page between each plate gives 4 layers (20
>mils) of high quality plastic insulation, I say high quality because these
>sheet protectors are much stronger, with fewer defects than plastic
>sheeting from the hardware store, and far better quality than "zip lock"
>bags I've used in the past.
>    I bet the assembly of this capacitor was faster than many MMC's out
>there.... total cost about $25.
>   If a cell, or several cells fails, it is easily removed and replaced with
>a new cell (my new design has not failed yet). Cells can be added if
>needed. My design has 24 plates, running a 15000 volt 30 ma NST at full
>power. I get arcs to ground now over 2 feet, corona about 1 foot. Still
>fine tuning the beast...
>    I guess the biggest weak point of home made capacitors is never knowing
>the exact capacitance. Does any one know if there is a EASY way to measure
>the capacitance of one of these? Will a hand held multimeter with
>capacitance meter on it work?
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