Re: Home made capacitors rule..sort of

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

Original poster: "gary weaver" <gary350-at-earthlink-dot-net> 

There is a lot of cutting involved in making all the polyethylene and
aluminum sheets for a flat plate capacitor.  Its much faster and easier to
build a rolled cap.  There is a type of flat plate cap you can build easy by
folding all the material back and forth like a japaneese fan.  Cut all the
plastic and 2 sheet of aluminum like your going to make a rolled cap but
fold it back and forth several times.  Its hard to make it all lay together
flat.  You need to sandwitch a flat cap between 2 sheets of plywood then
glue an edge around the plywood to make a box.  Fill the box with HV oil.
Be sure to put 2 coats of polyurethane on your plywood before you start.

Gary Weaver




----- Original Message -----
From: "Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
To: <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>
Sent: Sunday, December 07, 2003 10:12 AM
Subject: Re: Home made capacitors rule..sort of


 > Original poster: "Philip Brinkman" <peeceebee-at-mindspring-dot-com>
 >
 >      After looking at many of the capacitor designs out there, I feel the
 > home made stacked plate design is the easiest, cheapest, and strongest
 > design out there. I don't understand why so many people say the MMC design
 > is easier... soldering together 20 or so caps, assembling the base board,
 > resistors, wires, etc.and spending all that money does not seem easy to
me.
 >     I built a "notebook capacitor" using extra heavy duty plastic notbook
 > sheet protectors (5 mils thick) and aluminum foil sheets. Each page was
 > filled with mineal oil, an extra page between each plate gives 4 layers
(20
 > mils) of high quality plastic insulation, I say high quality because these
 > sheet protectors are much stronger, with fewer defects than plastic
 > sheeting from the hardware store, and far better quality than "zip lock"
 > bags I've used in the past.
 >     I bet the assembly of this capacitor was faster than many MMC's out
 > there.... total cost about $25.
 >    If a cell, or several cells fails, it is easily removed and replaced
with
 > a new cell (my new design has not failed yet). Cells can be added if
 > needed. My design has 24 plates, running a 15000 volt 30 ma NST at full
 > power. I get arcs to ground now over 2 feet, corona about 1 foot. Still
 > fine tuning the beast...
 >     I guess the biggest weak point of home made capacitors is never
knowing
 > the exact capacitance. Does any one know if there is a EASY way to measure
 > the capacitance of one of these? Will a hand held multimeter with
 > capacitance meter on it work?
 >
 >