Re: electric strength for "x" cm of "y" material

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: Steve Conner <steve@xxxxxxxxxxxx>



> This opened my eyes to the source of some problems i have been facing lately.

Yes. It's a bit annoying :( I found out the hard way when I was 
building my DRSSTC earlier this year. I spent a lot of time making a 
primary former with 1/2" thickness of HDPE between the primary and 
secondary, only to discover it worked very poorly and flashed over 
early, punching through about 1/2" of HV silicone caulk.

I discussed it with the other Steve on AIM and we came to the 
conclusion that the plastic makes matters worse. So I removed all the 
plastic insulation and went back to air. I still got flashovers but 
they were far less violent.

The moral of the story is that there's no point in using mixtures of 
air and other dielectrics for high frequency insulation. If you're 
going to use epoxy, say, EVERYTHING has to be vacuum potted in epoxy, 
and if you can't do that, then you are better using purely air.

I guess this is why oil is so good: It seeps into every crack so the 
dielectric consists of nothing but oil.

Steve Conner
http://www.scopeboy.com/