Re: tesla virgin no more ! but need help

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

Original poster: Mark Broker <mbroker-at-thegeekgroup-dot-org> 

Hello Caps Lock!!

The voltage rating of MMC caps is about 2.5-3 times the actual breakdown 
voltage.  Terry has tested this (intentinally) numerous times....  Unless 
the person designing/constructing the MMC plans on many hundreds of hours 
of runtime with a Mean Time Between Failures of many years, then the design 
chart on our site is quite acceptable to follow**.  If, like Dr. Resonance, 
you are building one of these MMCs, where failure in its 30 year lifetime 
is absolutely not an option, then definately derate by whatever factor you 
feel appropriate.  (In Dr. R's case the factor is 2.5x)

** To our knowledge, and we recently asked the list, no one has had an MMC 
failure by following our design chart and construction guidelines.  In 
fact, the only unintentional failures have been due to construction 
problems, or people knowingly abusing them.  And if a breakdown happens, so 
what - the caps are self healing and can tolerate *many* punchthrough events.

I suggest adding more caps in series to decrease the capacitance, which as 
I said earlier is *far* too high.

Regards,

Mark Broker
Chief Engineer, The Geek Group


On Thu, 05 Feb 2004 18:03:14 -0700, Tesla list <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com> wrote:

>Original poster: robert & june heidlebaugh 
><rheidlebaugh-at-desertgate-dot-com>    15Kv x 1.414 =  21.2,  KV     12 X 1.6 KV 
>IS 19.2 KV  LESS THAN NO MARGIN
>OF SAFETY. 15 X 1.6 KV = 24 KV IS A VERY SMALL MARGIN OF SAFETY ONLY 2.8 KV.
>MAY I SUGGEST YOU ADD AT LEAST 1 0 MORE CAPACITORS TO EACH STRING.
>     Robert   H
>