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Re: Capacitor problems
More "Staircase Wit":
I have checked HV caps with the following setup:
------* *-------
| |
-------||--------
The *'s are a spark gap across the terminals of the cap, about 3/4" apart or
so. Charge the cap in the same manner as you would in a primary TC circuit.
You should get a deafening roar from the arc that is created across the gap.
If you don't get any arcing in the gap, try closing it a little (power off
and shorted out first of course). If you get down to a gap distance that
the transformer should be able to jump and still no sparking, then it's shorted.
Here's something interesting too: Some caps that are "slow" aren't as loud
as the "fast" caps. I got a cap that was capable of handling the voltage
and held a charge forever (4 hours with no detectable leakage), yet the
sound it made using this test was much quieter than my TCBOR cap of smaller
value. Using this "slow" cap, I never got any streamers, but with the TCBOR
cap, I have always had fantastic results.
Chip