Re: "plate" capacitors

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-uswest-dot-net>" <A123X-at-aol-dot-com>

Its just that the MMC costs way more than the homemade plate caps. 

In a message dated 4/17/01 12:17:14 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes: 


>
> I built two very nice 30nf plate caps, in  PVC cases, with all the 
> attention to details they deserved (vacuum, good oil, good connections, 
> etc). Both failed after a short but illustrious life (black oil, black 
> smoke, black day in Little Rock). I used triple the amount of dielectic 
> material of the DC rating, and thought I would be off the hook. Anyway 
> to make a long story short, I then built an MMC using the GE 3kv 100nf 
> caps sold by Hosfelt (built 18 strings being I did not know how reliable 
> they would be, but only needed 4) and have to date (with about 12 hours 
> total run time with some being 20 minute continuous runs) I have not had 
> a single failure. They don't even get warm. I'll never build another 
> plate capacitor ever! That's my story and I'm sticking with it. I even 
> changed my name to the guy to brought this wonderful idea to us (LOL).