Re: Geek group caps, I think I made a mistake?

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

Original poster: "Sean Taylor by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <taylorss-at-rose-hulman.edu>

Hi Danny,

 > the caps I recieved are 2000 VDC .15mf , the ac current goes right through
 > them.
 > im using an 15/30 nst can I make these work somehow? I tried 10 in
parallel

Don't know exactly what you mean by "the as current goes right through
them."  BUT, I do know that you should be hooking the caps in series, and
with bleeder resistors (about 10 MOhms) across (in parallel with) each
capacitor.  With all the caps in parallel, that's 1.5 uF, and is nearly a
dead short as far as the NST is concerned (about 1700 reactive Ohms).  With
the caps in series, you'll be able to charge up the caps from the nst, and
the spark gap will fire upon reaching a high enough voltage.  Just use the
gap across transformer method, and place the caps in series with the
primary.  I don't want to discourage you, but it sounds like you could do a
little more studying in the area of electrical theory.  Understanding how a
TC system works, or at least the components will help a LOT in building one.

Your 10 caps in series will have a little bit (about double actually) too
high of a capacitance for a 15/30, if you're running a static gap, which im
guessing you will be.

To learn a LOT about Tesla Coils, check out Richie Burnett's site at
http://www.richieburnett.co.uk/tesla.shtml.   It has pretty much anything
you would want to know with great explanations.  Hope this helps!

Sean Taylor