RE: Energy Discharge Capacitor

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Daniel Seidel" <dfseidel@xxxxxxx>



I wonder what the shot life is supposed to be on these caps...

After getting a few off-list suggestions I was planning on
running a pair in series, which would only require about
1/2 faceplate voltage to be seen by either cap -- that should
keep potential reversal way down.  The real question would be:
how many shots is 10% when the caps won't be pushed to their
faceplate ratings.

-----Original Message-----
Original poster: Gomez Addams <gomezaddams@xxxxxxxxx>
Multiple people, in multiple physics labs have told me that it is
standard practice to remove pulse caps from duty when they are within
10% of their predicted shot life, so they don't fail catastrophically
and make a mess or cause other capacitors in a bank to fail.  Shot
life can be predicted fairly accurately if you know all of the
parameters of a shot - the formula is fairly simple.

A guy who worked in the Atlas Machine lab told me I should be very
wary of used large pulse capacitors showing up on the surplus market,
especially if I wanted to operate them near their ratings - he said
most of them are "used up".