Re: cap material question

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

Original poster: "BunnyKiller by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <bigfoo39-at-telocity-dot-com>

Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Will Daniels by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <tesla_is_god-at-37-dot-com>
>
> I know most people use PE as their dielectric but, I was looking through a
> page(http://www.datasync-dot-com/~ignatz/electro/teslacoil/platecap/homadecaps.h
> tm) at the dielectric material graph section and I noticed how good mylar's
> ratings were.  I know it must have been tried on a cap with a puncture
> voltage of 7500 per mil  and a better dielectric strength than PE.  Has
> anyone used mylar on a cap before?  I looked around and
> http://www.discount-hydro-dot-com/mylar.asp
> is selling mylar for pretty cheap.  Is this the right stuff?  Mylar seems
> far too good to be true.  If anyone could shed some light on this subject
> I'd appreciate it.
>      Thanks,
>           Will Daniels
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> http://Game.37-dot-com/  <--- Free Games
> http://newJoke-dot-com/   <---  J O K E S  ! ! !

Hi Will....

indeed Mylar is some pretty fantastic stuff as far as a dielectric.... BUT
...   it isnt good when
it comes to the hi frequency oscilations of the tesla coil application. The
mylar becomes warm ...
very warm under the rapidly reversing field changes in an AC cap
enviroment, thus the mylar becomes
easily punctured by the voltage and becomes useless as an insulator. If you
want to make a DC cap
with a low pulse rate duty, use mylar, but for the AC tesla coil useage go
for metalized
poly-pro-pa-leen ( spelling?? aaauuugh   eyem hookt on fonix ;) ) ...



Scot D