Re: CD capacitor

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

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

In a message dated 9/1/01 11:47:46 AM Mountain Daylight Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes: 
Justin, 
  The best choices would be polypropylene, polyethylene, teflon, kapton(this 
might be too expensive to consider though), which all have a dielectric 
constant of 2-3 and very low dissipation factor(something like .001%).    
Although mica has a higher dissipation factor higher than the above(I can't 
find my data, so I am guessing it to be about .04%), it is not too bad and 
it's high dielectric constant(6 - 8) might outweigh that small loss.  I have 
two very nice mica pulse caps that do not get even slightly warm in use.  I 
also have four mica transmitter caps that seem to work very nicely too.  The 
only real downside to considering it as a dielectric material is the lack of 
availability. 
Mike 


>
> I'm beginning to find from my various investigations into capacitors built 
> from readily available materials that many of them will not work because 
> the 
> are too lossy (e.g., mica, glass, polycarbonate, PET, etc.)  Has anyone out 
> there compiled a list of materials that will serve as good dieletrics for 
> capacitors being used with Tesla coils? It seems that the number of 
> materials 
> that are unsuitable for this use outnumber those that are suitable. Rather 
> than banging my head against the wall finding out what is not suitable I 
> would like to just know what will work. It would definitely be more 
> productive, and much better on the brain cells. If anyone out there could 
> tell me where to find a list of materials, it would be much appreciated. 
>                                    Justin 
>
>