Re: dielectric strength of hot glue was Re: Longitudinal Waves

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

Original poster: "Ed Phillips by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <evp-at-pacbell-dot-net>

Tesla list wrote:
> 
> Original poster: "Jim Lux by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net>
> 
> I'd be interested to know... If it is truly dissolved, then it's probably
> pretty good. If it is a "gel" then it's not so wonderful (because of the
> particles).  I'd think that it's probably the former.


> >
> > I "think"* hot glue is polypropylene dissolved in paraffin wax.  It 

	Don't know about the last part, but I once dissolved about a pound of
low-melting point hot melt glue in hot paraffin.  The latter was heated
to close to the ignition point (not exactly a brilliant thing to do, and
probably unnecessary) and the hot glue added until no more would
dissolve.  Ends up with a fairly interesting looking translucent solid. 
Someone has a name for this stuff, but I can't remember.  Anyhow, the
reason I tried it was because I wanted to pot a couple of GMHEI coils,
rather than dunk them in oil.  I had tried paraffin first, and found it
was easy to break down because of all the bubbles that formed, and also
a disappointment because of all of the shrinkage.  Not having any
potting tar around, I tried this other stuff.  Looked great, much
harder, but after all that work found it wasn't a much better
insulator!  Total wate of time.  My goal was to pot the coils in a
length of PVC pipe and mount them to a base box so as to look like "a
good old fashioned 6 inch spark coil" and put all of the drive circuit
in the base.  Oil would certainly leak, and I haven't tried vaseline
yet.  I have intended to find one of the local transformer shops and try
to scrounge some of the stuff, but haven't found anyone who still uses
tar to pot things, a la NST's.

	Any one who is interested in such things and has time on his hands can
repeat the paraffin experiment by warming a bit in a tin can and then
sqirting hot melt glue of a glue gun into it.  The temperature of the
glue is enough to keep the mixture molten.

Ed