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Re: Fw: Fair Radio Sales HV capacitor
> > I ran across a HV cap advertised in Fair Radio's latest catalog page 32,
> > 0.01 mfd at 100KV, wonder if anyone had had any experience with them in
> > Tesla service? They've lowered the price to $87.50. I imagine it could
> > work in, say, a 15kV/30 or 60 mA neon transformer type coil. Sure beats
> > the mess of "rolling yer own" and probably less money in the bargain.
> >
> > What's the consensus?
> >
> > Stephen, KJ6LH
>Stephen and all,
>
>There's good news and bad news with these caps. These are
>Mylar-dielecric DC-rated caps, and they WILL heat up under Tesla Coil
>use. As long as you keep run-times relatively short, and allow
>internally generated heat within the capacitor rolls to distribute
>before overheating occurs, they will work. Spark output will not be as
>"hot" as with polypropylene or polyethylene caps, and the caps cannot be
>operated for extended periods without risking melting & punch-through of
>the dielectric. But... they are relatively inexpensive alternatives to
>true pulse caps, and they will save you the time and effort of rolling
>your own.
>
>-- Bert --
Hi Bert:
I've tried my best to learn more on the construction of these caps,
scouring the 'net for a company named "FCI" that's stamped on these caps,
but could find nothing. This is the first suggestion I've seen that they
are mylar units. Have you found a source of info, or is this infered
from their self-heating behavior?
I also suspected that their dielectric might be compromising performance
so I built some extended-foil rolled poly/oil units, coincidently measuring
in at precisely the same capacitance value. This made for an easy
performance comparison since no re-tuning would be necessary. Before the
rolled cap's died, they delivered identical performance.
Regards, Gary Lau
Waltham, MA USA