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Re: [TCML] capacitors



(un) Terry -

I think that "good/bad" list may be dated, and that the GE 42L-series caps may have gotten a bit of an undeserved bad rap.

I know for a fact that several years ago people were building MMCs for spark-gap coils using these caps, but under-designed the MMC rather severely for both voltage and current handling capability, and were vocal when they failed. I contacted several of these people off-line, and had them send me samples of the failed caps for analysis. All showed evidence of either gross over-voltage or over-current (melted end terminations and/or swiss-cheese syndrome in the dielectric).

Back then, an on-line audio components company ended up with a large inventory of various models of these caps, and were selling them very cheaply in quantity (like $0.50 each for the .1uF 3KV part, and even less for caps with lower capacitance and voltage ratings).

In the earlier days of MMC, Terry Fritz had performed testing of several candidate MMC capacitors using a high power RF generator, and monitored capacitor heating. The metallized-film GE parts did not have as much margin as the film-foil Cornell Dubilier 942 series capacitors. However, I have built several MMCs for spark-gap coils using these caps, and found the GE parts to be reliable IF the MMC is designed to operate within the capacitor ratings.

Since then, a number of people have used these capacitors in various types of solid-state coils with complete success. Possibly those who take the time to design, build and debug an SSTC pay more attention to matching the MMC to the actual operating voltage and current requirements.

Regards,
Scott Hanson







----- Original Message ----- From: "Terry Oxandale" <Toxandale@xxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 11:39 AM
Subject: RE: [TCML] capacitors


How can a correction be made to the polypropylene capacitor reference
list:
http://hot-streamer.com/TeslaCoils/MMCInfo/good-bad.txt

G.E. 42L4102 3000 0.01

The capacitance value is erroneous in that it should be .10 rather than
.01 uF. I found no "contact" information on Terry's site with which to
send an email on the error.

(un)Terry



-----Original Message-----
From: tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx [mailto:tesla-bounces@xxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Tom Trevethan
Sent: Monday, December 03, 2007 12:50 PM
To: tesla@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [TCML] capacitors

Hi,

That's a big MMC - 200J per bang - IIRC about the same size as the one
used for
Electrum. What power are you planning to run at?

There is a useful list of good polypropylene capacitors for tesla coil
use here:
http://hot-streamer.com/TeslaCoils/MMCInfo/good-bad.txt

The Cornel Dubilier 942C20P15K (150nF, 2000V) seems to be very popular,
and I
have seen them advertised for $3-4 each. You would need 20 x 34 = 680
(approx
$2000).

Tom.

Quoting Tomas Stankevic <Tomas.Stankevic@xxxxxxxx>:

Hi,
what capacitors would you recommend me to build a 250nF @ 40kV MMC?
(for=20
DC TC powered by 3phase pig) how much (approximately) it will cost?
What=20
about shipping to Lithuania?

Toma=9A


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