Re: Cap Confusion

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: Cap Confusion
From: DELCOKEVIN-at-aol-dot-com
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 1996 11:41:56 -0400
Hi Guys,

I found out a little more about how Condenser Products rate their caps.
It all relates to lifespan. Their numbering system works like this,
TC103-34-300 means .1uf, 34 mills spacing between plates, and
300 mills hold off spacing between sections. They rate their 20kvacrms
caps at 136kvdcpeak (thats,34 mills of dielectric!). They normally rate
their caps to have a lifespan of 400 hrs.You can run them at 50kvacrms
if you want, but the lifespan would go down. By a factor of 1525, or 15 min
life span! or at 30kv down by a factor of 25, 25kv a factor of 5. But, if you
were to use these caps in lets say a balanced config where you had only
10kvacrms across it your cap would now last 256 x 400 hrs!!
They also must throw a few variables in there that they do not know, because
nobody has ever given these people hard data to go on. he has been assuming
a 90% reversal rate on the cap which translates to a primary q of about 14.
That is conservative for our primary circuits, I believe. They also pick
a heating factor that they think people can live with, which is also
a life span game.  Boy, there are sure a lot of variables to consider
in specing a cap, unless you know every detail of a capacitor and it's
construction, you are going to have a hard time comparing apples to apples
among these different companies. I would be interested the kinds of specs
others have given companies in the past, please feel free to email me. I
would like to talk to Richard Quick if he is out there about his caps.
Also, is Bill Wysock on our list? Anyone know why or why not?

Forever learning,
Kevin M. Conkey

[ I'm pretty sure he's not on the list.  Why?  He's never contacted me.
  If anyone knows his e-mail address (assuming he has one), I could write
  him to see if he wants on. -- Chip ]