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Re: The Ultimate Adjustable Tesla Coil Capacitor: .001-1 mfd in .001 mfd increments!



Original poster: "Barton B. Anderson" <bartb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Hi Jeff,

Pretty cool again! My first capacitor used 9"x13" 20 gauge aluminum sheets with PP dielectric sandwiched and then all of it submerged in a plastic tray of mineral oil. It was fun to build, but I never did get a chance to try it out as I happened across some professional pulse caps.

Having a variable cap is certainly beneficial. The same can also be done with MMC's. My second MMC bank was build for adjust ability. All I have to do is add or remove caps to change string lengths or even parallel or series the strings as necessary. Thus, each MMC is not soldered but bolted in place.

http://www.classictesla.com/photos/mmc/mmc.html
There's a bit of spar varnish on the caps (thus, the discoloration). That was from a previous disaster.

I still use this very cap bank for various coils. I simply add or change connection as necessary. It was odd to build an MMC on a cylindrical form and at first I wasn't sure if this would work out well or not, but so far, I've actually enjoyed having the ability to change the cap bank at will. Here's some pics of it's usage where I actually took some digital pictures (not something I do often). For this coil, I simply set the cap bank for 0.0188uF.
http://www.classictesla.com/photos/ba45/ba45.html

Not to take away from your design however. I think it's certainly a good design (I love the binary approach). The plate cap at our voltages would certainly need oil submerging to keep corona losses at bay and perform self healing, but it should work great with lower voltages. Have you tried something of this design on higher powered coils?

Take care,
Bart

Tesla list wrote:

Original poster: "Jeff Behary" <jeff_behary@xxxxxxxxxxx>

Hello All,

I've developed a special adjustable capacitor for tuning Tesla Coils.
I've tested and used it for 2 years, and was going to patent the idea but honestly can't afford to. So here it goes, an adjustable capacitor rated from .001 mfd to 1 mfd in .001 mfd increments...it can tune any Tesla Coil exactly and can be easily built by all by off-the-shelf materials. Best of all there are no moving parts...its all done mathematically - and using simple math no less!

http://www.electrotherapymuseum.com/2006/FloorModelPancake/AdjCap.htm

Jeff Behary, c/o
The Turn Of The Century Electrotherapy Museum
http://www.electrotherapymuseum.com

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