Re: GE 42L series caps Good or Bad??

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

Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <dhmccauley-at-spacecatlighting-dot-com>


> >I just finished up a medium coil powered by a 12/60 and a static gap.  My
> >MMC is 20 in series of 1200v .33uf caps for .0165uf -at- 24kv.  Well the
coils
> >performance was poor to say the least with only 2 foot arcs.  So i tried
and
> >tried with no luck.  So just out of curiosity, i felt the caps after i
> >turned it off.  They were hot!  well 2 of them were.  I let them cool
off,
> >then ran it again.  Checked for heating, it was still in those 2 caps.
One
> >was hotter than the other.  So i took them out.  I took apart the really
> >warm one and found some depressing realizations.  The ends of the foil
were
> >totally burnt to a crisp at one end!


Sounds like you blew the caps prior to getting the system into tune,
especially if this was the initial run.
Next time, use a signal generator and scope to find the ballpark tune point
and go from there.

Dan