RE: Building a 4"

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

Original poster: "Dave Hartwick by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ddhartwick-at-earthlink-dot-net>

Egad Jeremy--I hope you can get away with not spending 150 bucks on that
15/60 NST! Have you looked around at the neon sign shops?
Dave H




Original poster: "Jeremy Scott by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>"
<supertux1-at-yahoo-dot-com>

Hi,

I'm an avid electronics adventurist making my
first coil. Those capacitor-diode voltage multipliers
just don't do it for me anymore :)

Anyway, the coil I am building is a typical 4.5"
secondary. I have completed the primary (16 turns .25"
copper fridge tube .25" apart, 30 degree inverse cone)
- so far so good.

Now I have my questions:

I am designing this to use a 15Kv/60mA neon
transformer. I found a place to get one new
for $150. I'm not sure if this is a good
price for new, me thinks its kind of expensive.
I've called all my local neon shops (about 3)
and they don't have any old ones to give me.

Does anyone on this list have a better source
for cheaper neons, preferably new ones?

I tried building a few capacitors already, and
most of them are a pain in the butt. (Saltwater,
rolled aluminum flashing, etc...)

I've decided to go MMC. My capacitor research
tells me that metal-polyethylene are the ones to
use. At 15kV/60mA, I figure a .01 ufd will
give me the most bang. I've found a list of
known working MMC capacitors, some of them have
their voltages rated in AC while others are DC.
(I looked up the technical specs of some of them.)
It makes it difficult to figure out how many of
each I'll need because those rated in DC volts
have quite a substantial reduction in the
rating in AC volts. (RMS?)

Does anyone have a recommendation as to a)
what combination of ufd/voltage/qty and b) a good
soure to get them? (DigiKey is WAY expensive, there
has to be somewhere else cheaper.) I'd like to play it
safe, spend the extra money for more capacitors and
NOT have them explode. :)

Other than that, I'm off to winding my secondary :)

TIA,

-Jeremy

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