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Re: help me put my coil on a diet; its capacitor appetite is expensive!
Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson" <bartb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Nick,
LTR according to JavaTC is something closer to .48 uF (hmm...
$2400 worth of 942C's, even if I only use strands of 15! I think I
am going to pass on that option).
You NEED to fine the "voltage, peak current, and RMS current". If
your cap can handle those three it will not blow up. Since your
other caps failed so easily, something was way too high for
them. We normally think of LTR caps for NST systems that have well
defined current limiting. Since I don't do pig systems I am not
sure how well that would work there.
No need for LTR with a pig. The energy is too high (near 50j) and the
cap cost would be enormous. Running STR is the normal mode of choice
with pigs. You'll still be well below transformer resonance yet have
plenty of juice to run high bps if wanted. I'd stick with
professional pulse caps if possible but spec the caps for the peak,
rms, and voltage just as Terry stated so there's no more failures.
Regarding CSI. It doesn't surprise me that they were in no hurry to
contact you. 15 years ago I was told by a CSI employee about an
incident with a "want to be" coiler. He had them build a cap to "his"
spec then his application killed it. His daddy just made CSI pi****
off during the recoup the cap cost situation. I was told directly
that Tesla Coils were sort of shy'd away from due to this incident (I
don't know if it's been forgotten about by now). Their real money is
in quantity and quantity is what gets their attention. Like I
mentioned, I was lucky enough to acquire the polystyrene high voltage
pulse caps, but only because the company I worked for purchased a
large quantity of caps from CSI. CSI caps are excellent! I've been
running those 60KV .02uF caps off and on for a long time and not a
failure even in pig mode (no heat, no anything but good running caps
I can count on to do what I set them out to do). Like I said, I was
lucky to be talking to the right guy at the right time.
Take care,
Bart