Re: Seacor capacitor sucesses

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

Original poster: "Malcolm Watts by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <m.j.watts-at-massey.ac.nz>

Hi Greg,

On 25 Sep 2002, at 8:18, Tesla list wrote:

> Original poster: "Gregory Hunter by way of Terry Fritz
<twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <ghunter31014-at-yahoo-dot-com>
> 
> I got 100 of these caps from you. At first I used 5
> strings of 10 but later upgraded to 10 strings of 10
> for 47nF/16kv. I used no bleeder resistors. With this
> tank cap I used various power supplies including a
> 9kv/120ma NST bank, a pair of MOTs with voltage
> doublers (around 8kvac) at roughly 3kva, and even a
> few short bursts with an 11kv pole transformer
> ballasted to 4800va. The caps lasted about a year in
> intermitent duty before they began to fail. They died
> gently and one-by-one. No explosions--just a little
> smoke. Oddly enough, the Tesla coil would keep
> sparking along as if nothing was wrong even as a cap
> was releasing its smoke. They were great caps while
> they lasted--providing long, blue-white streamers of
> up to 60" from my 4" x 24" coil. They barely warmed
> above room temperature, even on longish runs, so I'm
> not sure what killed them.

My guess is that the lack of bleeders did it *if the caps in each 
string were not accurately matched to each other* or if one decided 
to punch through and self-heal before the others, which undoubtably 
would have happened. One cap shorting throws an additional burden 
onto its mates in the same string.

Regards,
malcolm