RE: smoking capacitors

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

Original poster: "Troy Peterson by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <troypeterson-at-shaw.ca>

Hello

I must concur with Andy, it sounds like you are using plastic bottles. From 
my experience plastic bottles do not work... They may have lower leakage 
than glass, but the breakdown voltage is way to low to be used with any 
form of transformer other than perhaps a MOT. I used 10kv OBITs and found 
that it arced over immediately,  causing the plastic to melt around the top 
where the mineral oil and salt water meets. It defiantly should not arc or 
spark anywhere inside the capacitor. A little bit of corona (blue haze) is 
to be expected from the edge of the foil, but no sparks... Also note that 
even this corona will melt plastic.

Regards,
Troy Peterson

>Original poster: "Andy Cleary by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" 
><cleara-at-twcny.rr-dot-com>
>
>Hello,
>
>         It seems as though you are using plastic pop bottles... if this is
>the case - then that is most likely your problem.  I have never
>actually used them myself, but from past discussions on the list it
>seems plastic bottles are no good for Tesla Coil use.  What I would
>recommend is for you to rebuild your cap using glass bottles.  Go to
>the local bottle-return area, and see if you can "buy back" some nice
>glass beer bottles.  It may get you some funny looks, but that worked
>for me!
>         Of course if you actually _are_ using glass, you might have a bad
>glass type... Tesla used to import specific glass bottles from quite a
>distance during his research at Colorado Springs, so I guess the types
>do matter.  In general, I'd say to stay away from colored glass.  Hope
>this helps!
>
>-Andy C.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
>Sent: Friday, April 19, 2002 9:09 AM
>To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
>Subject: smoking capacitors
>
>
>Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
><HIGHWYRUNNER17-at-aol-dot-com>
>
>I have built a small tesla coil for my physics class at school and I
>have a
>salt water pop bottle capacitors and the mineral oil has leaked out of
>the
>pop bottles and I have changed the salt water in the tank and resealed
>the
>bottles but there still is smoke coming off them. What should I do to
>get rid
>of the smoking, and is there suppose to be little sparks in the
>bottles where
>the mineral oil and the salt water meet?