RE: exploding capacitors

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

Original poster: "Daniel Kline" <daniel_kline-at-med.unc.edu> 



 > -----Original Message-----
 > From: Tesla list [mailto:tesla-at-pupman-dot-com]
 > Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 12:45 AM
 > To: tesla-at-pupman-dot-com
 > Subject: exploding capacitors
 >
 >
 > Original poster: "Steve Zeitler" <zeitler-at-verizon-dot-net>
 >
 > I'm reading all these postings about caps blowing up. Being
 > the keeper of a
 > medium size coil in a commercial setting, naturally i don't
 > want this to
 > happen to me (caps blowing up)
 > The latest post mentions an asyncronous rotary gap being used
 >  causing the
 > failure. I've not heard of this before and the coil I mention
 > has one. Is
 > this bad and why?

This (I think) was because I was using the cap resonant with a pt and
the cap (or the case) overvolted. It wasn't like the pt was going to get
damaged. In a neon system, I'm pretty-sure that the transformer would
have died long before the cap blew. I never had a problem with that cap
as long as I used a static-gap. It didn't
last 10 minutes async. I wouldn't have given the situation another
thought if it hadn't been for other's caps blowing up too. Those caps
are the only ones I've heard of exploding in a long time.
What type of cap is in your coil? Is the coil DC?
Dan K.