Re: electrolytic capacitors/homemade capacitors

["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: "Christopher Boden by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <chrisboden-at-hotmail-dot-com>
> 
> >Original poster: "Tim J by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
> ><digital_raven45-at-hotmail-dot-com>
> >
> >1>     Just wondering if anyone has used Electrolytic Capacitors in
series on a
> >Tesla Coil Curcuit before?? Would it work??
> 
> Sure...for about 2 seconds until you created a benchtop full of grenades.
> Lytics *REALLY* don't like AC. :) For the extreme side of Electrolytic cap
> design The Geek Group built the "Thumper" project, a bank of up to 250
> seperate 450VDC 2000uF Lytics all wired in paralell through 500MCM rails. We
> demo'd it at the Winter Teslathon with 80 caps and the shockwave could be
> heard outside!

	More details, please!  I've used 12 of those in parallel feeding a
rather large EI core wound with big wire to run a magnet charger which
will almost magnetizer a matchstick.  Learned the hard way that it was
necessary to put a very (VERY!) high-current diode across the coil to
keep from blowing up the capacitors with the reverse voltage which has
to flow.  I use a big 28 volt contactor to switch the circuit, and
haven't had its contacts weld after about 200 or so operations.

Ed