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RE: Salt Water Caps (fwd)



---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 97 08:24:00 -0500
From: John Timmins <john-np-at-link.co.nz>
To: mod1-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: RE: Salt Water Caps

***** NOTES from John Timmins (JOHN-NP -at- LINK) at 26/02/97 8:13 AM

TL> Subject: Salt Water Caps
TL>
TL> Hello again--
TL>
TL> After being very busy with work and even more happily getting engaged:)
TL> I am ready to go back constructing my first Tesla coil.
TL>
TL> I am now at the point of making my capacitors. I thought that it might
TL> be wise to make salt water caps because of ease/ and price. I
TL> downloaded
TL> the Tesla Archive File by David Lima on how to make these capacitors.
TL> According to the plans, however, he said his bank of 6 salt water caps
TL> had a capacitance of 4.3 nF.  I have calculated that I need at least a
TL> .0063 uF capacitor.
TL>
TL> So if I understand things correctly, using his plans I would need 1465
TL> of these banks just to get the right capacitance, disregarding the
TL> voltage.  OBVIOUSLY something is very wrong here.
TL>
TL> It seems several of you have built salt water caps.  Can you tell me:
TL>
TL> 1) Are his 4.3 nF (per bank of 6 caps) correct?  Or is it a misprint?

Hi Nathan...
To my understanding, .0063uF is 6.3nF, ie pretty close to 4.3nF


TL> 2) If his numbers are correct, what can I do to make a different type
TL> of
TL> salt water cap?  I could sooner afford to buy a commercial cap as to
TL> drink that much soda for 8700 bottles.


After building my first bank of salt water caps, I constructed a 
capacitance meter using a '555 as a monostable & microcontroller/LCD 
display to measure the time delay. the bottles measured 700pF each of which 
6 in parallel gave me about 4.2nF

The bottles were 'Steinlager' stubbies with threaded rod down the centre 
and tin foil over the outside up to where the neck starts to taper off.

These 6 caps were used on a 15kV/30mA neon transformer which worked OK, but 
the other coil components still need modification for max performance.


TL> 3) Am I missing the boat somewhere?
TL>
TL> Here is another start for a thread to add to the Tesla Guide.
TL>
TL> Thanks
TL> Nathan
TL> -- Nathan Lamphere
TL> http://www.ronan-dot-net/~randyl/nfolder/nathan.html
TL> Javascripts: WebPageMaker - easily create your own webpage right
TL> online!