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Re: Compact capacitor design
>really be a pain. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make a more
>compact capacitor. What about a better dielectric ?
That is not too easy at home. You might consider good-quality PE to reduce
the amount of insulation a bit. You might also consider making the cap
from
a few larger (in uF) caps in series. At lower voltage stress the
insulation
required is less. (Volts/mil is not a constant!)
The secret of commercial caps is the use of very thin insultators to get
the largest volts/mil possible. Then many of those large-valued
low-voltage
caps are in series for high voltage. Foor dc applications (or with any dc
bias) you also need to make sure leakage currents in caps are equal.
Perhaps you might want to parallel each cap with a resistor to make them
more or less equal. This is easy when practically all current is flowing
in
the resistors: just use same value vor each resistor.
At home there is not too much real improving I can think of. Working with
very thin PE foils is definately out. Plasma-spraying the aluminum on
those
films is probably out too. :) Home-made caps just tend to be huge. :(
--
Harri Suomalainen mailto:haba-at-cc.hut.fi
We have phone numbers, why'd we need IP-numbers? - a person in a bus