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Re: [TCML] plastic cap

I bought BNZ series caps from them to put into many small and large commercial coils and never had one fail. BUT: you need to talk to their applications engineer and talk about things like 100% voltage reversal, peak currents, the inductance of your primary, and such-like. They don't like to sell caps to Tesla coilers because they used to have so many coilers blowing up under- specified caps and wanting their money back. If you can really talk the EE lingo, they'll talk (and sell) to you. But then too, I was a commercial customer buying in quantities. I don't know how they feel about selling to individuals these days.
A friend of mine has a PCI BNZ-series cap in a small (450 watt, 15/30 NST) coil he built in college over 30 years ago, which he's been running routinely at parties and Hallowe'en ever since and the cap has never failed.
BTW, PCI rates their "WVAC" caps at the working ring or resonant frequency, not 60 Hz! They told me that in writing and on the phone. The BNZ series are specifically designed for pulse discharges into inductive loads with high voltage reversal. 

On Jan 17, 2008, at 7:15 AM, David Rieben wrote:


Hi Marko,

I realize Plastic Capacitors of Chicago, Inc. has a pretty
big line of high voltage capacitors. A quick view of their
products page at: http://plasticcapacitors.com/product_index.html
reveals that the "BNZ" series are obviously the most de-
sirable capacitors for Tesla service. It appears this series is only built in small runs according to customer specifica- tions, though. I'm sure a few of the other mass produced varieties with the proper voltage/capacitance rating would probably still work, though.
I have been fortunate enough to come across an unused Plastic Capacitors BNZ 2500-104 unit that's rated at 0.1 uFd, at 25 kV(AC) at 60 hz, not "DC". From what I've gathered, it appears that you can determine a 60 hz AC rated capacitor's DC voltage rating by multiplying the AC voltage rating by about 2.3. Most of the motor run or snub- 
ber caps that have a dual AC/DC (not the Australian rock
band) voltage rating will seem to depict this - i.e. 440 VAC or 1000 VDC, 660 VAC or 1500 VDC. That would depict 
an equivalent DC rating of my "BNZ" cap at nearly 57 kV
(DC).

As a side note, a quick view of Plastic Capacitors' home
page, http://plasticcapacitors.com/, also reveals that they actually have a "Tesla coil capacitors" icon, although this icon appears to be inactive. 
David Rieben





----- Original Message ----- From: "mark olson" <kc5gym@xxxxxxx>
To: "Tesla Coil Mailing List" <tesla@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: [TCML] plastic cap



Hi Marko,
Does the term "Plastic Capacitors" refer to the type of the capacitors or 
to the brand name of the capacitors?

David Rieben



Dear group:
I hope that the reference to "plastic capacitors" in the book report is not a "bad omen". 
I just bought six off ebay.

brand name, David
Thanks,
Marko _______________________________________________
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