RE: need help/capacitors and AC

["Tesla list" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Original poster: "Lau, Gary" <Gary.Lau@xxxxxx>

If you were building a piece of equipment that needs to run reliably, 24
hours a day, 365 days a year, then you should use the 500VAC rating.
But in our hobby application, most of us run our coils for only a few
hours in total.  Terry Fritz performed an experiment, and determined
that the average continuous life expectancy of these caps when used at
their DC rating is (from memory, don't quote me) something like 75 hours
- more than adequate for most hobby coils.  Another way to think about
it is, you would have to use 16 times as many caps (and cost 16 times as
much!) if you use the AC rating.

Regards, Gary Lau
MA, USA

> Original poster: "Matthew Boddicker" <shmerpleton_town@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> This is Matthew,
> On the cornell-dubilier web page it said that the model 942C caps
> went to 2000dc or 500ac. Do I pay attention to the dc or ac rating?
> thanks Scott,
> Matthew