Re: breaking in caps (fwd)

To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
Subject: Re: breaking in caps (fwd)
From: Tesla List <mod1-at-pupman-dot-com>
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 12:24:56 -0600 (MDT)
Approved: mod1-at-pupman-dot-com


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 29 Apr 1998 08:04:31 -0400
From: Thomas McGahee <tom_mcgahee-at-sigmais-dot-com>
To: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Subject: Re: breaking in caps (fwd)


Jeff,
No one ever said you couldn't just throw a TC capacitor together and
fire it up immediately and have it *work*.

But if you desire to protect your investment and have it run for as long
as possible, it is imperative that all air be excluded. All it takes
is one air bubble to allow a localized corona to develop, and believe
me, the corona will *eventually* degrade the poly to the point that
the insulation will fail. The degradation is cumulative.

Sometimes I just need a quickie capacitor for some experiment, such as 
tweaking the value of an existing cap so I can achieve proper
resonance without having to make my primary coil larger, and I just
cobble something together from scraps. I might not even use any oil.
And it always works! But I KNOW that it is (as Malcolm put it so
succinctly) doomed to fail. 

Is it worth it to make TC caps that will last quite a bit longer
than ones that are just cobbled together? Yes.

Are there times when all we want is for the darn thing to work *now*,
and our attitude is "damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!!"?? You bet.

Wisdom is knowing when to cobble and when to be patient and go the
extra mile to make the thing bulletproof.

Hope this helps.
Fr. Tom McGahee

> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 28 Apr 1998 18:34:48 -0500
> From: Jeff Corr <corr-at-enid-dot-com>
> To: Tesla List <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
> Subject: Re: breaking in caps (fwd)
> 
> I know this seems unethical, and someone is bound to reply to this, but :
> 
> I made a rolled poly cap, submersed it in mineral oil, and just let it stand
> vertically
> with the top open for only 10 minutes, allowing the bubbles to come out as i
> poored
> more oil in.  At 5 minutes they stopped so I tapped the tube, making a few
> more come
> out, but not very many.  Then I sealed it shut, never vaccumming it.  I then
> hooked it up
> to the system, and flipped it on for 2 minutes at full power.  The caps are
> only rated
> at 25kv, .01256uf.  Thats not even double the voltage of the neons, which
> they should be...   and yet 6 months later, with MANY hours of runtime, some
> times up to 7
> minutes themselves, the caps still test out PERFECT, no detectable leakage
> whatsoever at 10kv.
> 
> Again I am wondering about getting jumped on here, but I must ask myself if
> the traditional time spent on making the caps is worth it?  They seem to
> work fine in
> even a "throw together" version.  Perhaps I am just "experimenting"....
> :-)
> 
> NOTE : I wouldn't try running them dry though...   :-)