Re: term understanding: voltage reversal.

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

Original poster: Christoph Bohr <cb-at-luebke-lands.de> 

Hello Bert.

This is pretty much what I hoped to hear. Of course somtimes theings can go
unexpectedly wrong but the idea with the microswitch sounds good to me.
I have already tried tempeatur sensors but they never triggered in the short
time they survived the RF field. Microswitches are surely not that sensitive.

best regards

Christoph

 > Original poster: Bert Hickman <bert.hickman-at-aquila-dot-net>
 >
 > Hi Christopher,
 >
 > You are probably OK. You may be operating close to the limits of the cap,
 > and you may see some shortening of the capacitor's life depending on your
 > main gap setting. Since these caps are typically "pulls", it's hard to say
 > how much stress they've seen in their previous life and how much remaining
 > life they'll have in your system.
 >
 > Unlike capacitors packaged in cylindrical cases or smaller metal cased
 > caps, caps using this package style normally do not fail explosively when
 > used in a TC tank circuit. If you overheat the capacitor during long runs
 > or get a sudden buildup of gas due to internal arcing, the soft
 > polypropylene cases are designed to bulge outwards to help relieve internal
 > pressure. Obviously, if you kept running your system under these conditions
 > it may be possible to blow the oil-fill plug or perhaps even rupture the
 > case. I've not heard of any coiler actually experiencing this problem with
 > this style package. However, it may still be a good idea to put the cap
 > inside an inexpensive plastic container to catch the oil in case you do
 > have a messy failure. BTW, some commercial pulsed laser systems use a
 > microswitch that monitors one side of the capacitor's case so that the
 > system can be shut down if the case begins to bulge outwards.
 >
 > Good luck and best regards,
 >
 > -- Bert --