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RE: Hurray, I destroyed my homemade cap!
From: Adam[SMTP:absmith-at-tiac-dot-net]
Sent: Thursday, November 27, 1997 12:56 PM
To: Tesla List
Subject: Re: Hurray, I destroyed my homemade cap!
Bert wrote:
>Sooner or later, your dry caps will fail due to microdischarges, surface
>oxidation, and spark tracking all stemming from electrical breakdown
>effects along the air-LDPE interface, and particularly around the edges
>of the plates. While corona may look innocuous, it's actually extremely
>hot and energetic.. and hot ozone does very nasty things to LDPE. Please
>keep us informed on how long your cap stays operational.
Yeah, I know all about that :-) Back in the eighth grade, I made some
caps from pepsi bottle material (PET) for my first TC ever, and after a
few weeks use the plastic had these fractal-esque lightning-like
branching patterns all over it, especially from the corners of the
plates. It was actually quite beautiful and artistic, and I included the
etched dielectrics as part of my display.
So then, how about solid corona protection, like paraffin wax? I could
get this cheaply at the grocery store, melt it in a double boiler and pot
the cap. This would make the cap a lot more difficult to repair, but if
I over engineered it in the first place it should survive a few years of
Tesla use, right?. I am using 120mil of very high quality LDPE (4 x
30mil) and operating at 9kV, so my cap is not likely to blow anytime
soon. Mostly I just want to make something without that horrible oil!!!
-Adam
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absmith-at-tiac-dot-net
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