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Re: homemade rolled cap



Original poster: Karl Lindheimer <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Bobby,

When I first got started in this fascinating hobby, I was on a low budget also. I guess I worked my way up through the ranks by first:
Building a "Party Cup Capacitor" This was a simple, no-cost first attempt. After a few minutes of "first light" the cap would vibrate like a speaker and not work too well.


Next, I built a flat "plate" capacitor using thin picture frame glass and aluminum sheets. This worked somewhat, but not too well.

I then built a rolled cap using overhead transparency sheets sandwiched between aluminum foil sheets. I needed two in series for the voltage I was pushing. The result: about 10 minutes of great sparks, then shorting. By this time, I was hooked, and I then proceeded with another cap design.

I used plastic 2 liter soda bottles in a salt water bath, 1 liter seltzer bottles, Corona Beer bottles, and even battery jars in salt water to attempt to make a low cost, decent performance cap.
Eventually, I discovered that the Corona beer bottles made a decent cap, and led to the best streamers I had to date. Moving copper jumpers, and adding or subtracting bottles allowed for fine tuning.


However, I eventually built an MMC array. I spent about $11.00 on digikey poly HV caps, and in under an hour I built a cap that gave the best perfomance to date, in a tiny package. It is still performing like a champ, 2 years later. However, I gained precious first-hand knowledge about capacitor theory and design with all of my previous attempts.

I hope this posting offers you a little insight into the various capacitor methods.

Best Regards,

Karl
On Feb 24, 2005, at 9:40 AM, Tesla list wrote:

Original poster: Bobby Amaya <dimon20042004@xxxxxxxxx>

Hi everyone,

Can anyone tell me how to build a good high
voltage(40+kv) rolled cap that is not extreemely
expensive?uilt a

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