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

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

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

Hi Bart,

I like your approach to using cylindrical pipe to connect MMCs!  Clever.
I've tested these caps with a small (30s?) pole transformer and they 
seem to work fine...the most I've pushed them to is 4KW, which is 
about all I have for transformers here.

I like the idea of using modern caps with this concept, the hard part 
is finding the values.  It would be good to have them custom made as 
large pulse caps, and then Tesla Coiling would be a breeze in at 
least one aspect.  For experimentation purposes they work well.

Also, re: your reply on strange coil designs...that's good news that 
there are some new ideas floating around.  People had to get creative 
in the 20s to avoid patent infringments.  At the time there were 
hundreds of Tesla Coils patented by people other than Tesla...and all 
of them were just, in the end, well, Tesla Coils plain as can 
be!    Creative, but still Tesla Coils.  A lot was learned in those 
early processes though...many times by accident!

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


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

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