capacitors

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

Original poster: "Mr Gregory Peters by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <s371034-at-student.uq.edu.au>

Hey everyone,

As most of you know, I am in the process of building a large coil (up 
to 10 kVA). I am currently investigating capacitors. I have had it with 
constructing oil filled rolled or plate poly caps (I've made 6) - too 
messy, too many hours! I read with interest, some pages where people 
have used banks (up to a couple of hundred) of commercial polypropylene 
caps. I was wondering how well these work - are the sparks nice and 
hot, or thin and purple? I was also after some construction guidelines -
 most of these caps have thin leads, therefore requiring a complex 
series/parallel arrangement to handle the current. What resistor 
arrangement is used? How does the polypropylene stack up to LDPE as a 
dielectric? Are these huge banks alot less efficient then a simple 
staked plate cap?

Cheers,
Greg Peters
Department of Earth Sciences,
University of Queensland

Phone: 0402 841 677