Re: Overstessing Maxwell caps

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

Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla123-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Hi Steve,

It's really up to you. Obviously, 3x is safer than 2x. It's one of things
where it only takes one
time to kill the caps. I don't think anyone can say go with 2x and
everything will be ok, or go
with 3x and everything will be ok. It's ultmately your coil and you have to
make the decision to
chance it or not.

Regards,
Bart

Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Steve White by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<slwhite-at-zeus.ia-dot-net>
>
> I have two 0.03 uF Maxwell caps rated at 35 KV each. I was planning to
connect
> them in parallel to obtain 0.06 uF for my pig coil which I am currently
> building. The pig puts out 14,400 volts RMS. I am now beginning to wonder if
> the 35 KV voltage rating for the 2 parallel caps is enough. I theoretically
> have about a 2x safety factor. I have been reading that 3x is preferable. My
> design requires about 0.06 uF of capacitance. Should I go ahead and use these
> caps (I paid quite a bit for them) or should I sell them and build a MMC
array
> instead? Alternatively, I could turn my variac some to a voltage
sufficient to
> obtain a 3x safety factor.