Re: Blown Capacitor!!

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Terry Fritz" <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>

Hi Ed,

At 04:01 PM 12/12/2000 -0500, you wrote:
snip...
>Roderick,
>
>I know how you feel.  I originally built two rolled poly caps and destroyed 
>both of them, along with a C.P. commercial cap.  It is a sad day.  Has anyone 
>built a MMC cap for one of the larger coils running 5 to 15 kva?  Something 
>in the order of .05 ufd to .10 ufd?  This might approach the cost of a 
>commercial cap.  I now have in place a safety gap across the rotary to limit 
>how much voltage the caps ever see.
>
>Ed Sonderman


"My" original inspiration of getting into MMC work was Chip's infamous
"Halloween coil" explosions of 98 in which he fried two commercial caps
while running his big coil on the roof of his house (I wonder if there are
any pics of that??).  The giant bang noises and oil running down the
shingles is well documented in the archives of the time.  I remember
looking at the blown guts of the thing and thingking to myself "there are
better ways to make a cap"...  He has since made a big MMC out of Panasonic
caps and his coil has been running great ever since.  If Chip has his ears
on, maybe he could tell the number of rows and strings.  I think it has
like 350 caps in it but after blowing the $$$ commercial caps, that was a
bargain...

Cheers,

	Terry