RE: Maxwell Capacitor - Air Bubble question . . .

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Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H by way of Terry Fritz <teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com>

 >Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H by way of Terry Fritz
 ><teslalist-at-qwest-dot-net>" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com>
 >
 >I bought a number of 37xxxx series capacitors from a local source and it
 >appears one of the capacitors has a slight
 >air bubble inside the capacitor. (You can hear the oil shift when you tilt
 >it etc...)  The capacitor does have a fill plug and I am guessing the plug
 >was either removed or leaked some air into the capacitor.

I'd not worry about bubbles, they seem quite common in many caps. Some need
them as in glass tubes ones with soldered on ends for expansion purposes.
Plastic and metal walld caps can flex as they warm up, but agian, they seem
quite common. I use a factory new General Atomics cap, and it has a bubble
at the top. It's a "single ended" model made of plastic, with the "fin"
separating the high voltage terminals.
 >Will this small air bubble greatly affect the performance of this capacitor
 >(voltage rating?) or do you guys typically still run these things even if
 >small air bubbles form in the capacitors.
 >Re-filling with oil is not an easy process as they either use heated oil,

With what? They use many types of impregnants. IPBP and DOP seem common,
sometimes castor oil in large low rep caps. Filling it up with wahtever
junk you have laying around sounds like a great way to contaminate your
existing impregnant.
KEN


 >>>Whoever said the capacitor was going to be refilled?  The point
explicitly states "re-filling with oil is not
an easy process as they either use heated oil, or typically compress the
capacitor prior to filling to create either a
negative or positive pressure."  There was no implication that I would going
to refill this with some run-of-the-mill
mineral oil.  These capacitors typically aren't meant to be refilled at any
time during their lifetime except maybe by
the manufacturer only.  Typically, the plugs are epoxied over prior to
delivery.

The Captain